Look What Happened
by chasingfireflies
Summary: The end of the world is a funny thing. -/- Zombie!fic, Faberry, Puckleberry friendship.
1. Closer Than We Think

_Disclaimer: Uh, no?_

_This is zombie-AU, after _"A Very Glee Christmas". _There will be blood and guts. Hopefully such a warning is unnecessary._

* * *

**Look What Happened.  
**Closer Than We Think.

* * *

**_The end of the world is a funny thing._**

_It began with a single man escaping from a previously inescapable facility just outside of Columbus, Ohio (truth be told, it began nineteen years prior to this event, but for the sake of this telling, we'll just say it began with John West and fill in the blanks later). He made his break for the hills in combat boots, shaggy-haired and bearded, and otherwise stark-naked, at 2:13 in the morning on the 15th of January. Anyone with any idea of his real identity and a view of his mad dash would be amazed that he ran so fast for a forty-two year old – or would, assumedly, be going for the capture or kill._

_Any other person would try to find him pants._

_This rather natural reaction to the appearance of a naked man was what sealed the unhappy fate of one **Leanne McCoy** – and the immediate family residing in her house on the outskirts of Columbus. When John West turned up on her front porch in all his naked glory, sweating and sick-looking (at an estimated 2:58 A.M), Mrs McCoy found herself unable to turn him away – rather, she offered him a set of her husband's clothes and a spot on her couch until the morning. Had she given him the clothes and turned him back to the road – perhaps even just called him a nutjob and slammed the door in his face as soon as she'd answered it – Mrs McCoy may have saved herself, her husband, and her three children from a terrible, somewhat disgusting fate._

_As it was, Leanne McCoy was a rather decent human being, and instead offered him the couch for the night. This would, ultimately prove to be her downfall, as John West, unknown to the other occupants of the house, fell into a rather violent seizure at an approximate 4:07 in the morning, of which he emerged dull-eyed, dead, and unspeakably hungry._

_Leanne McCoy was bitten in her sleep at 4:13 A.M, losing a chunk from her shoulder in the process._

_Her husband, in his haste to defend her, suffered a bite to the leg at 4:14._

_Their three children, hearing the ruckus, came to investigate, and were bitten consecutively between 4:15 and 4:17._

_The undead John West feasted until 4:42._

_The five McCoys reanimated at 4:48._

_This was the beginning of the apocalypse._

_This may seem harsh, of course, but really, with six infected on the loose in Columbus, surrounded by sleeping families – and, the next day, moving crowds in the city – it's easy to believe that infection would spread. And spread it did – quickly, and painfully. You see, you don't have to die to pick up the infection – rather the opposite, because if the death hits in before the virus does, then that's it, you're dead – just switch fluids. _

_So when the – for lack of a more common scientific term – zombies came to the point of biting people in large crowds, they were often batted away before their victims could be properly devoured. Said fatalities would wander on with their day, applauding themselves for surviving the attack by that one absurdly sick-looking homeless man downtown, and possibly consider rabies shots. _

_Moronic behaviour, really – they didn't get away scot-free, they got away with the saliva seeping into their open wounds, attacking their blood stream and the DNA merging into their systems. Anywhere between ten minutes and eight hours later, they were dead. And, evidently, reborn again, willing to naw on their office-mates and their angry, bitchy bosses until the end of time – anything to fill that grumbly stomach._

_Government response began at 6:47 P.M. on the 15th with an aim of containment and neutralisation. It took two days for the outbreak to take the majority of the city of Columbus. Containment failed. The first nationwide news broadcasts warning citizens of a virus outbreak originating in a laboratory in Columbus, Ohio, aired on the 18th at 5:00 PM. By January 19th, infection had spread out of the city, and, marginally, out of the state. It continued to spread with astounding speed. This was, essentially, the end of the world – and it all began with Leanne McCoy allowing a naked, sick-looking man into her home at an absurd hour of the morning, purely out of the kindness of her heart._

_Let this be a lesson – human kindness is overstated. Paranoia is the key to survival._

**/-\**

Puck sits with Rachel on the 18th of February in a diner downtown.

He doesn't know why he's there, because there's supposed to be a party at Finn's later, and Rachel's totally not invited – or maybe _that's_ why he's there, because he might not admit it, but she's kind of cool, and he wants to be a good friend to her. This place is totally vintage though – total sixties vibe and only a couple of patrons in the booths by the windows - and the food's good so he's sitting up at the counter with the short brunette next to him, and chomping into a burger. He's a little surprised she isn't talking – but he's learning that she doesn't talk so much, now that he's getting to know her, anyway. Instead, she's sitting there and picking at a salad with a thoughtful look on her face and a diet coke in her other hand.

"What's on your mind, Rach?" he hazards, and he cringes a little while he pushes it out, because she talks like a highly-intelligent chipmunk on speed most of the time and it kind of makes him want to stab himself in the face, sometimes. She glances at him and frowns a little – he probably wouldn't notice if he hadn't been hanging around her so much lately.

"Just thinking about my dads," is her short reply (he's surprised). "Said they had an emergency or something, dad had to go to Columbus quite suddenly yesterday. He took daddy with him, presumably for the company. It sounded ominous."

"Your dad's a doctor, right?" Puck asks, frowning a little as he tries to remember it, and she smiles at him for the effort.

"Something like that," she replies, and it sounds a little off how she says it, but he remembers her initial introduction of the man as a 'doctor' sounding a little vague, a little misplaced too.

He remembers when he met the small, spectacled man – guy creeped him out a little, seemed a bit clinical in everything, really. Leroy – the taller, darker guy and Rachel's proclaimed 'daddy' – he was obviously Rachel's favourite, and from their brief meeting, Puck could see why. The dude was all smiles and hugs and kindness, and not an ounce of creepiness to his visage.

"So, what, like a _special_ doctor?"

He's a little curious, really. The Berry's have a pretty nice house, he knows – he's been there, it's really nice, if a little bland everywhere that isn't Rachel's bedroom. And Rachel's daddy is a lawyer, Puck knows, which, while high-paying, doesn't quite cover it. So he figures that Leroy, the short dude, must be some kind of super high-demand surgeon or something.

"Something like that," she tells him again, just as vague and just as slightly off-putting in his gut. But she smiles, even if it is a little bit weird around the edges, and he decides to dismiss it for now. "It's all just science to me. Still, I'm worried. They needed him for something. It didn't sound good."

She goes back to frowning at her salad, and Puck watches her curiously. If her dad's been called away for some emergency operation or something, she probably shouldn't be worried. It's not like he'll be hurt by it or anything.

His thoughts are interrupted when the waitress behind the counter turns up the volume on the small television hidden beside the register.

_"...don't have footage, but sources say that people are running rampant on the streets of Columbus, with the range of infection spreading quickly through the rest of Ohio. Efforts to contain the outbreak are still in effect. The virus is reminiscent of – well – of almost any zombie film aired on national television..." _Puck quirks an eyebrow at the small television. The waitress watches the screen with rapt fascination, and when he glances to Rachel beside him she's sporting a bored pout and dull eyes._ "Nonetheless, this is far from a joke. Infection is spread via saliva or blood. If you find yourself bitten, please submit immediately to your nearest health center for quarantine. Treat all infected as hostile. I've been recommended to lead you all to believe that this situation is under control – however, my personal recommendation is to lock your doors, board your windows, and avoid contact with others-"_

"Zombies," Puck says flatly, earning the stunned, slightly frightened gaze of the waitress. He, however has eyes only for the brunette beside him, wondering what she thinks of this. In all his years of films and video games, Puck has only ever considered the zombie-apocalypse as a joke. Like all gamers, though, he totally has a hypothetical Zombie Apocalypse Survival Plan manufactured to perfection. Still, he kind of thinks that this entire thing is totally bogus, and he's wondering why Rachel looks _bored_ with it.

"Uh-huh," is her reply, and she goes back to her salad with a sigh.

"That's the Secretary of Defence," the waitress tells him, and he turns to look at her with an unimpressed quirk of his brow. "Doesn't that mean that's some real shit going down or something? Like, the secretary of defence wouldn't be able to do something like that on National television if it wasn't actually happening."

"Sure, whatever," Puck tells her dryly, watching the middle-aged woman flinch. Rachel just stabs at her salad beside him, unperturbed. He wants to know what she's thinking – this reaction is strange, not denial, not disbelief, not intrigue, just _boredom_. "Babe, I'll believe in zombies when I _see_ one."

Which is, ultimately, the dumbest possible thing for him to say in any such situation.

There's a loud crash from the far end of the room – the clinking shatter of glass, then the patter of it clunking to the ground – and a scream as the young woman sitting there with her boyfriend is crushed to the floor. Puck just stares, more than a little shocked by the sudden intrusion, and can only stare at the burly man – face cut up, presumably from crashing through the glass – jerks his head down to the screaming girl and bites her in the neck.

The next part is kind of disgusting, because no one seems capable of moving to save her and there's a lot of blood and a lack of screaming involved – easily put, the girl loses the ability to partake in any such activity. Puck kind of wants to vomit. He still can't make himself move when Rachel gets calmly up from her stool, picks it up as she goes, and strides towards the girl on the ground and the figure hulking over her. The boyfriend sits rigid in the remains of the booth.

There's a resounding crack when Rachel swings the chair down on the hulking, cut up, animal of a man's head, and it causes every other occupant of the diner to flinch and shudder back to life. Puck tries to get up – his legs feel like jelly, and he still kind of wants to upchuck – and join her, or stop her, or something, but she just brings the metal rungs of the stool back down on the guy's head until it caves in, bloody and gross, and he slumps to the floor beside the dead girl.

Rachel nudges both of the bodies with the stool before placing it stiffly back on the ground and turning around to look at him, flipping her hair over her shoulder and huffing a little, apparently unaffected. And yeah, maybe that's a little badass.

"Zombies," she tells him dryly, and his knees quake a little. Because, shit - this is the end of the world.

* * *

_We will bathe in the sea of disbelief, but we will not go quickly.  
__No, we will not die so easily.  
__And I knew that this would happen, it always does  
__And I couldn't stop my reaction, so I let it come. I let it come._

_I still hold the belief that we are free,  
that we don't need the rules to see,  
that despite what we've done, we're not alone  
We're closer than we think to home_

_**Closer Than We Think, The Classic Crime.**_

* * *

___R&R or something..._


	2. Well Enough Alone

_Disclaimer: I don't own it. Sorted? Coolio._

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**Look What Happened  
**Well Enough Alone

* * *

_**The outbreak **_**_of the TVXK virus was sudden, deadly, and totally expected._**

_It happened a lot like it was straight out of a Hollywood movie – key points of the story plot involving scientists, covert ops, conspiracy, biological warfare and a severely complacent government. Also, there was a lazy, somewhat unintelligent night guard involved (because really, how else would on John West manage to escape a secure government facility at two in the morning?). Government special ops creating a secret scientific faction with a basis in biological warfare (and failing to contain it) is practically textbook. And because of that – further, because all broadcasts described it as the zombie apocalypse – civilian reaction was slow and disbelieving. People were more inclined to think of the event as a joke, rather than an epidemic._

_Of course, all such conceptions went straight out the window when the bloody, drooling human beings started leaping on them in the streets. Then there was terror, and panic, and the continued back-and-forth state of the general public in terms of acceptance and denial. None of these eventual reactions really helped out in the situation (at least any more than the 'this is all a totally bad joke' mindset did, anyway), and by the time that the majority of the central population decided to pull their heads from their sorry asses and treat the situation as a threat, it was far too late to do any good. Infection was spreading, and quickly. _

_Denial got them nowhere fast, and the arrogant close-mindedness of the general population led to a lot of death and blood and screaming. These useless souls lacked the foresight to create a survival plan, to evacuate, and when physically faced with an infected, lacked the creativity or drive to escape the situation. And, **bam **- they were cornered, bitten, and dead. And, you know, reborn._

_Moral of the story? To survive the zombie apocalypse, you need an open mind._

**/-\**

It's kind of scary how cool Rachel is being about this whole thing.

After she cracks the skull of that guy in the diner, she drops a twenty dollar note on the counter to pay for their food and heads for the door. She doesn't seem particularly concerned with the two bodies on the floor, or the gaping hole where the window used to be, leading out to the darkening sky. He stares, beside the counter, and she glances back at him when she opens the door.

"We have things to do, places to be," she tells him, sounding a little exasperated but totally unafraid. "Come along, Noah."

She says it the same way she would urge him to go to glee – like this is a common everyday occurrence, or an appointment they were supposed to be keeping rather than the **end of the world**. He just blinks at her for a moment before glancing around at the other shocked patrons of the diner.

"But, what about the..."

"Oh," is her simple reply, almost a deadpan when he doesn't finish his question. "Right. Okay, I'm only going to say this once, but this _is_ the end of the world, and my recommendation for all currently assembled is to get yourself involved in the buddy system, stock up on food, board up your windows at home, and _aim for the head_. Also, take the time to kindly avoid anyone bleeding, drooling, or looking at you with a generally hungry expression. Are we clear?"

She seems to take the collective blinking in the diner as an affirmative, rolling her eyes and gesturing over her shoulder at the open door.

"Now, come _along_, Noah," she says impatiently. "Or give me your keys. Whatever. I need to get home."

"You're going _home_?"

"That's where the guns are," is the deadpan reply, with all the obviousness and authority of a drill sergeant. "Now _move, move, move_! I _knew_ I should have driven my car today."

He doesn't ask why that's relevant – he has a feeling he doesn't really _want_ to know – before he stumbles over to her, still a little shaky on his legs. She rolls her eyes, gripping his arm and shoving him out the door before giving the rest of the diner patrons a small salute.

"And good luck to you," she tells them jovially enough. "If you're still alive in the morning, you should totally meet us at McKinley."

And then she forwards out the door and pushes him roughly toward his truck, grumbling to herself all the while. He glances around jerkily, just waiting for another one of those things to jump at them from somewhere – but he only sees a couple of seemingly innocent civilians lolling around and staring curiously at the broken window. There's a bit of a scuffle at the end of the road – he can hear a lot of loud cursing from his place outside the diner – but it's not close enough to see, or to be concerned about. Still, despite the calm, his hands shake as he pulls his keys from his pocket.

"Oh, for god's sake!" Rachel grumbles beside him, and the next things he knows she's snatched the keys from his hands and shoved him towards the passenger's side. "Look, I know this is probably mind-shattering for you, Noah, but I really don't care right now. I need to get home. Because Zombies may not be running rampant in the streets right at this specific moment, but by infection rates and the number of kids I saw go to the nurse's office at school this afternoon I'd only give it until morning that they will be. And, you know, I'd really rather be gun-toting at the time than watching you shake around with your keys. Now get in the fucking truck."

And he does as she says, because Zombie apocalypse or no she can still talk at him like a chipmunk on speed, and it's still kind of irritating. And endearing. And familiar, which is good. She slams her door behind her, calmly starts the car, and backs out of the parking spot while Puck sits silent in the passenger's seat, torn between staring out the windscreen and staring at her. She's taking this whole thing scarily well, and when she starts whistling to herself over the low hum of the radio (broadcasting the same warnings as the television, apparently) and tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, her weirdly calm, accepting demeanour strikes a creepy chord in the back of his mind.

"Your dads are in Columbus," he says to her, and she nods, continuing with her whistling and cruising along the road. "This all _started_ in Columbus. And they're _in_ Columbus."

"I'm aware," she replies slowly, eyes narrowing at the road in front of her. And that's all the warning he has before she swerves the car dangerously and a body crunches and slides across the hood of his truck. He watches her smile – it looks a little dangerous, a more sensible man would experience fear for that. "Indignant fucker!" she exclaims victoriously, glancing in the rear view mirror and giving an obvious one-finger salute. "Trying to jump at people on the roads. You dumb bastard!"

He doesn't know what hits him first – the realisation that the zombies are apparently supremely unintelligent, the fact that one just got intentionally hit by his car, or the fact that Rachel apparently has the vocabulary of an ice road trucker.

"You're not worried about your dads?" he manages to ask when she spins the truck around a sharp corner, speeding through the relatively quiet streets.

"Not particularly," is all she says – idle, disinterested, like it's not a point of concern at all. And maybe, he realises, it isn't. They went to Columbus for a reason, coincidentally at the same time as a zombie virus escaped the city. And here _Rachel_ is, unperturbed by the current zombie-apocalypse and speeding through the streets of Lima, Ohio, in his pick-up truck after crushing a zombie's skull with a stool.

"...You knew this was going to happen, didn't you?"

She doesn't answer him – just glances at him quickly from the driver's seat and quirks her lip a little. But she's unreadable – not giving a damned thing away – and he doesn't understand. This whole thing makes no sense to him.

He's shocked into looking at the road when she slams on the breaks, winding down her window and shoving her head and shoulder out the window to shake her fist. There's a couple of cars stuck and beeping on the road in front of them, and heading the line is a silver car parked across the road, windows down and the driver apparently freaking out inside, blocking traffic in both directions.

"Hey! Hey, fucktard in the BMW! What the fucking _fuck_ are you doing!" she yells, and Puck turns his surprised gaze back at her. "Move your motherfucking car! I have things to do!" There's a reply from somewhere – loud and angry – but it's muffled through the body of the car around him. Rachel, with almost the entire top half of her body hanging out of the window, hears it perfectly. "Oh yeah? Oh _really_, old man? Bring it on! I will kick your ass all the way to _Tokyo_ and back, you _moronic_ _bastard_, and use the spare change in your pockets to buy me sushi while we're there! _Get your car off the fucking road!_"

There's some more swearing, a lot of loud horn-honking going on, and Rachel shakes her fist and flips someone off, but Puck's not sure who. What he is sure of is the dark shadow slowly lumbering towards Rachel from the side of the road. The sun's at their back, and he can't see them – can't make them out, or figure out who it is – only that they're steadily picking up speed and heading straight for the truck.

"Rach-"

"Noah, if it ain't helping or cursing, I'm not listening."

"Rachel!" he hisses, reaching over and yanking on her red shirt. "Get in the fucking truck! There's someone coming from the-"

She whips back into the cab before he can finish, rolling the window up quickly, clearly getting the message. She leaves the glass cracked open an inch, eyes locking on the approaching figure and tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, obviously trying to think of something. Puck swallows heavily in the passenger's seat. The figure gets closer, blocking out the sun with an unsteady gait and a stained football jersey and –

- taps lightly on the window, ducking down to look into the cab.

Rachel and Puck both stare at that all too familiar face for a long moment, before drawling out their simultaneous thought of "you _fucker_."

"What?" the figure at the window asks, voice drifting in through the thin crack. "Guys, can you let me in? Someone said something about zombies, and I went running to get snacks for the party, so I don't have my car."

"Oh, fuck that, you can sit in the cargo bed. I am _not_ opening the door for you," Puck growls out, flipping the tall boy off when he pulls a whiney expression. "My truck, my rules, Finny-boy. Get in the back or walk home."

"Rachel," the tall guy tries, and she snorts at him, gesturing over her shoulder.

"Uhm, first off, I don't know if you're infected, so _no_, you aren't getting in here," she tells him dryly. "And you know, leaving a girl in a Christmas tree lot in the middle of shit ton nowhere without a ride? Yeah, that was bound to come back and bite you in the ass. So, cargo bed for _you_."

"But Rachel-"

"Don't care, you have ten seconds."

"Just open the-"

"Nine."

"But they could get me on-"

"Eight."

"Dude, there's a baseball bat back there, you can ward them off or something."

"_Seven_."

"You guys are so mean to-"

"_Six_ – so help me _god_, if this moron doesn't – _five_ – move his car, I'm going off-road – _four_," Rachel grumbles, revving the pick-up's engine just to broadcast the point. She hears Finn sigh, moving to clamber up in the back. She smiles brilliantly, not having to listen to him any longer, and Puck stares with that same lazy concern he's been toying with for the last half hour as her grin turns devilish. Really, he should have expected it, because Rachel isn't often the most patient person.

He winces when the tires of his pick-up screech on the tar, and Rachel jerks the steering wheel for them to turn sharply off the road at quite the sudden speed (they both ignore Finn's somewhat girlish scream from the back of the truck). Then they're careening down the suburban sidewalk, avoiding the traffic mash-up and running over mailboxes. They bypass Finn's house without a second thought, even though he yells something else ignored from the back. He can't exactly jump out – Rachel's a freaking speed demon, so he'd probably hurt himself if he tried. They only stop when they make it to Rachel's house, when she jerks the truck to a stop right in the middle of her front yard, skidding it right into the centre like a pro.

She's out of the car before Puck even realises they've stopped, and he scrambles to follow her, slamming his door behind him. Finn jumps down, following shakily after them, and Puck eyes him a little warily, unsure if his pallid colour and his sick-demeanour is due to infection or Rachel's driving. They follow Rachel into her house and Puck makes his way through to the living room so he can stand idly by and wait for Rachel to click the locks back in place on the door. He's not entirely sure why – maybe it was the way she killed that zombie so easily in the diner, or her inconsiderate mowing down of zombie and mailbox alike, or maybe it's her total pottymouth, though it's most likely just the way she seems so calm and prepared for this – but he kind of _wants_ to be around her.

Honestly, it stumps him a little – she's Rachel Berry, the scarily intense, vegan Broadway diva with the conservative wardrobe and the five-year plan. The natural inclination is to pick the strongest, biggest, toughest person in the town and partner up – in which case he should probably give Sam a call, because Finn may have been his best friend or something, but Sam was totally more badass than Finn. Not that either of them were particularly badass – but Sam was definitely better than Finn in that department. But in the last half hour, Puck has been privy to the previously undisclosed badassness that Rachel apparently possesses. And it's cool, really – _awesome_, in fact – and even, in a way, comforting. She seems to know what she's doing, and that's a good thing to be around in the current situation, because the end of the world? It's anarchy. And it's going to get worse. And he's not going to be able to survive it alone. That doesn't mean it shocks him any less.

"So," Finn starts, a somewhat irritated look in his eyes, kicking the toe of his shoe at the ground as Rachel flits in and out, again, of the room, leaving them to their own devices for a few moments. Puck just crosses his arms, staring at the other boy and waiting for Rachel to come back and tell him what to do – because despite his many years of zombie movies and playing Left 4 Dead, he _really_ has no idea right now. "You and Rachel, huh?"

Puck frowns and quirks an eyebrow, ultimately unimpressed at the accusation in the boy's voice and listening to the sound of scuffling and drawers hurriedly opening and closing in the other room.

"Uh-huh," is all he says, because Finn can come to his own dumb conclusions – Puck doesn't really care. Knowing Finn, he'll probably assume they're dating and play the 'I can't believe you would do this to me' card or some other shit, and Puck will get irritated because people will be dying outside and Finn will act like more of a girl than Rachel would. "Girl needs _someone_. Preferably someone that _doesn't_ ditch her alone in the middle of the night, in the cold, without a ride. Never thought I'd see the day where I had more chivalry than you, but hey - Rach is hot, smart, badass, and an _a-mazing_ kisser."

Not that he'd kissed her since before Sectionals, but whatever. Rachel was great eye candy, even if she _wouldn't_ make out with him anymore. And she wasn't bad company, either, despite what everyone had ever said about her (including him).

"I can't believe you would do this to me!" Finn exclaims, and Puck doesn't even fight the urge to roll his eyes, because – _really_ – clockwork. "Again! First with Quinn, and then with Rachel! What is it – can't get anything good of your own? Always have to go for my sloppy seconds?"

Puck just yawns.

"Finny-D," Puck drawls slowly. "Finnocence. Finnward Cullen." He uncrosses his arms and cracks his knuckles, wondering where the fuck Rachel has gotten off to. "Do you ever wonder what it is that girls _actually_ see in you?"

Finn just blinks at him, because he doesn't know where the question is coming from. Puck doesn't bother continuing, or answering his own query – he _knows_ why people date Finn, and it's always more about convenience than attraction, but _Finn_ doesn't seem to know that – because he wants to let Finn think about it. The boy will likely torture himself trying to figure it out. And that's totally cool with Puck, because his ex-best-friend who is kind of just whatever now is probably too dumb and too arrogant to figure it out. Not without a lot of thought, anyway.

Finn opens his mouth dumbly, probably to ask what Puck's talking about, but he doesn't get the chance to actually get a word out before Rachel strolls back into the room, a lockbox held easily in her hands. She drops it down on the coffee table, producing a key for it quickly and flipping it open without a word. He wonders about the small, square device she pulls out – a tiny metal box that flips open to a plastic pad and almost enough empty space to fit a finger.

She doesn't explain herself before she grabs Finn's hand, yanking on his fingers until she has one shoved into the slot of the small box. He stutters, probably trying to ask what she's doing, but she purses her lips rather pointedly and snaps the contraption shut on his finger. Finn yelps in pain, tearing his finger away as soon as she unlocks the thing, and Puck sees a small prick of blood bubbling up on the pad of his pointer finger. The process is not unlike a blood-sugar test, Puck thinks, watching as Rachel snaps the small box back together and shakes it for a few seconds before the four small lights on the top of it start flashing.

They all stop on green, and Puck swears he can see half of the tension draining out of her shoulders.

"What the fuck, Rachel!" Finn yells, going red in the face and clearly about to unleash his bitchy 'I'm the victim' tirade. Rachel just sighs to herself, flipping the box open and tearing off the blood-stained felt pad before dropping the gadget back in her lock box.

"You're clean. No infection," she declares gruffly, crossing her arms and turning to look at the two boys pensively. "I had to check. And it was just a tiny prick of your finger, you'll get over it."

"You could have just asked," Finn tells her snootily, and Puck rolls his eyes at the same time as Rachel does.

"And expect you to tell me the truth?" Rachel asks – it's rhetoric. "Odds are, the majority of people who _are_ infected are going to hide it somehow, with the hope that they won't turn or they'll find a cure before they do. Both of these situations are highly unlikely. Otherwise, it's their stubborn will to survive, alternatively abandonment issues. And no one will just bite the bullet. And before you start asking and pointing fingers, I haven't been bitten – I'm hardly _that_ stupid – and Noah and I have barely spent an hour apart for the last nine or so hours. If he had been infected, I'm fairly certain I would know."

Puck nods at that. But he still has to question her.

"Why do you have a test for it?"

Rachel stares at him for a second, the barest deer in headlights expression hidden behind layers of nonchalance and bravado that, if he has to guess, are all entirely forced.

"That is, perhaps, a story for another time, Noah," she replies gently enough, and Finn probably doesn't catch the plea behind her authoritative tone, but Puck certainly does. She wants him to stop asking, to not push, to postpone this just for a little while – leave well enough alone, just for the time being. She'll answer him later - preferably when they're properly and entirely safe, rather than in this false illusion of it that they have in her home.

"Okay," is all he says. She'll probably have another couple of people to tell the same story, he realises. May as well let it all loose at the one time. "You said something at the diner about McKinley?" He knows he's picked the right topic, because she nods and gestures for the two of them to follow her out of the room.

"Right. Okay. That's in the plan. Here's what we have," she explains quickly. "Zombie apocalypse. Crash course. The infection is spread through blood and saliva – if either get into your bloodstream, you've got it. So basically, wrap all open wounds, because you don't want anything in them. You'll want to wear the thicker clothes – denim, leather, harder things to get through. Cover as much of yourself as you can – exposed skin is free game. Don't get cornered, don't get bitten. And if you _do_ get bitten, _don't_ keep it to yourself – getting others killed for your own idiocy will just ruin my fucking day, okay?"

Puck nods, and glances at a sulky Finn to see him hesitantly accept the words while they stomp up the stairs.

"When battling a zombie – aim for the head. Melee weapons are particularly good for this. Also, shotguns. Really, just go to town. If you don't have a weapon, make sure you don't hit the fucker in the mouth – if its teeth break skin I will shoot you myself. And if you've ever seen Zombieland, there's a couple of good rules in there, too," she tells them. "Double-tap, for instance? Never assume your mark is dead. Assumptions _will_ get you killed."

Puck give another nod of agreement, following her into her fathers' room and to the closet. She pulls the doors open roughly, dragging a couple of plain black duffel bags from the top shelf and pushing them into Finn's hands.

"You're going to take these downstairs," she tells him simply. "Go to the kitchen. Anything non-perishable – canned food, snacks, whatever you can find. Pack it all in tight."

Finn, in all his stupid obedience, just nods and heads back out of the room.

"And I'm assuming we're taking this stuff _to_ McKinley?" Puck asks when he's gone. Rachel stares forlornly at the open doorway for a few moments before replying.

"Yeah. I figure we can board up the bottom floor. That way we have toilets, showers, the huge cool room in the cafeteria – plenty of space for storage, which will be good considering we don't know how long we'll be there. There's a good view from the roof, so it's unlikely we'll be ambushed on our way out the front door, or unaware of impending attack," she explains quickly. "There's enough room for the entire club and more to coexist without habitually murdering one another – though why I'm bothering to consider them in my dank future is a good question, because all they've ever been is _horrible_ to me. Also, I'm of the mind that Ms. Sylvester has a weapons cache hidden somewhere on campus."

Puck considers this. And then he nods, because knowing the Cheerios coach, she probably does have a couple of shotguns hidden around the school, waiting for the moment she finally snaps entirely and decides to take Jacob Ben Israel's head off with a well-placed round and a battle cry. Either that, or she's waiting for total war with Germany or something.

"Okay. McKinley it is," Puck replies happily, nodding his approval of the plan. "The only thing they're lacking is bedding." Rachel nods idly, frowning for a fraction of a second to herself.

"Inconsequential. We can loot for that," she says with a small shrug and a wave of her hand. "It might take us a few days to get mattresses – or alternative appropriate sleeping arrangements – organised and in the building, but we need to be safe about it. Shelter comes first. Then we'll get a small force together to scavenge up the rest of it. First, we'll need the base materials, and we'll need to collect our teammates. Preferably _before_ they get all gross and drooly."

"Sounds like a plan. What do you need me to do?"

She shoves another duffle bag off on him and leads him back out of her dad's room and down the hall to a closed door he's never been in, but that she'd once referred to as 'The Study' (he could practically hear the capitalisation when she said it). In the few times he'd been in her house, Puck had ignored that door – always picturing bare walls and a lone computer – maybe a book case in the corner, or an armchair or something. But she opens the door for him – fiddles with it for almost a minute, but he can't see why it takes so long because she's standing in the way – and he blinks a few times, because this is _nothing_ like he imagined.

This is _so_ badass.

The windows are blacked out, neon blue lighting shining down from the roof. There's a chrome tool rack lined up against the entirety of one long wall – but it's certainly not _tools_ held up on that metal. There's a number of rather shiny looking guns – shotguns, rifles, handguns galore - knives, a range of different baseball bats, and he thinks there might actually be some nunchucks up there somewhere. Opposite the wall of totally badass – and, now he thinks of it, incredibly _creepy_, because why the _fuck_ do the Berrys own all this shit! – stuff is a metal desk, boxed in on both sides by some heavy-looking filing cabinets, and a large safe that Rachel pointedly avoids while she walks by. He doesn't ask why. But he _is_ curious.

"So, Rachel," he starts lightly enough, even if there is a tiny crack of strain in his voice. "What did you say your fathers _do_ again?"

The look she gives him – eyes dark, lips pursed, some faint amusement hidden beneath the tension, the distaste of the situation – makes him grimace.

"Would you believe me if I said this stuff was mine?" is her deadpanned, questioning reply, and Puck blinks. Because really? There's something big going on here, and Rachel seems to know everything about everything, and her dad was called into Columbus suspiciously in sync with the virus outbreak. Puck is coming to his own conclusions, but there is a certain strange safety with this girl – he can't explain it in any other way than that it exists – and he's not going to give that up for suspicions. He might not even give it up if they're proven truths.

"Really?"

"Most of it," she says. "The files are dads. And a couple of these things on the wall are his too. Daddy owns a pistol that he leave in his bedside drawer. Everything else belongs to me."

He stares at her – not in disbelief, but more in askance. He wants to know why – why she has enough weapons to supply a small army, why her dads are in Columbus, why she knows all about this zombie virus thing. But she's got that plea in her eyes, still.

"Later?" he grumbles out. It irritates him a bit – he wants to know _now_. He wants everything to make _sense_. He _doesn't_ want to follow Rachel around like a bulldog because she knows what's going on, and what to do, and he doesn't. He doesn't want to just be taking orders from her – even if it is the only way he's got even half of a guarantee to survive. But he _will_ wait, because she's not ready to divulge everything yet, and he thinks she doesn't want to have to repeat it.

"I'm sorry, Noah," she tells him simply – and it's sincere, but he can see she's as thankful as she is reproachful. "I know it sucks not being in the know. And I know it's a lot to ask, but I need you to give me a little blind faith with this. Just for tonight." He just nods his assent and she smiles slightly, dropping another duffel bag at her feet (how many does she _own_, and where does she keep _getting_ them from?). "I need you to pack up as many weapons as you can. Take your pick, too – whatever you want to carry on you. Set something aside for Finn." She gestures to the large cabinet in the corner of the room. "Ammunition is in there. You'll need to pack that too. And stay _away_ from the safe."

She doesn't explain why. He's not sure he wants to know.

**/-\**

Puck almost jumps when the phone starts ringing. He's hauled three duffel bags – huge and full of guns and shit – on the ground in the hallway, near the front door, and then the house-phone goes off somewhere else in the house. The sound is a shock. He's kind of surprised that the phone lines are still working. His mobile reception dropped out a few hours before the announcement.

Finn appears, lugging along a few bags of his own from the kitchen, and he dumps them beside Puck before blinking curiously and standing up straighter. He looks towards the noise a little forlornly, but doesn't seem to consider finding the phone himself. That's okay – Puck doesn't either. So neither of them move for a minute, because the sound of the phone echoing around in the empty, quiet house is kind of super creepy.

Then Rachel stomps down the stairs, all jeans, and combat boots, with her leather jacket down to mid-thigh and her hair tied back – and damn, she's just _such_ a badass. And she purses her lips at the both of them, drops another duffel – presumably her personal things – with the rest of their stuff, and dashes off to answer the phone.

"Rachel speaking," Puck hears her answer stiffly when the ringing stops, and a moment later she's walking idly back into the hall, the cordless phone pressed tightly to her ear. "So long as you're both safe," she says tensely, and even though she doesn't sound particularly concerned – more like she veiling anger or something – Puck knows that she's talking to her fathers. "Containment failed? _Really_? I would never have _guessed_, dad."

The sarcasm is prevalent, and Puck frowns. She's obviously talking to the slightly creepy dad – the short one with the glasses that had always put Puck a little bit on edge. And maybe he's never really noticed it before, but apparently the guy puts Rachel a little bit on edge as well. Most of the people at school have always assumed that the Berry family dynamic would be amazingly sweet – all love and warmth and happiness, which is part of what made it okay in their minds to bully her – but Puck can see it now, in the tense set of her shoulders and the stiff iciness in her voice as she speaks to her dad, and the three absurdly large duffel bags packed tightly with weapons and ammo beside him. They might not be religious nutters, or bigots, or anything like that, but the Berry family is apparently more fucked up than the _Fabrays_ are – and they _are_ religious bigots that threw their own daughter out on the street and lived on in drunken hypocrisy.

That is a _big thing_.

"I _know_ what the plan is," Rachel says stiffly, and even as he watches she's using her shoulder to keep the phone up and pulling a heavy handgun from the holster beneath her jacket, smoothly loading the rounds and cocking it as she heads for the front door. He watches her glance through one of the door-side windows. "I have _always_ known the plan, dad, _you're_ the one that went to fucking _Columbus_. So pull your head out of your ass, accept the fact that containment isn't an option and there isn't a cure, and get yourself and daddy back here before you both get killed. I'd really rather not have to drive two hours to retrieve and shoot your undead body."

Puck just blinks at the coldness she's exhibiting. When she talks about her fathers, she normally speaks with such affection – but the more he thinks of it, the more he realises that her affection is mainly for Leroy. She normally avoids the topic of Hiram – he's a _doctor_, she'd told him, _something like that, it's all just science to me_.

But they're a gun-toting family with a Zombie Apocalypse Survival Plan, and Puck really starts thinking that the science _Doctor_ Berry studies isn't _medical_.

"So camp it," he hears her saying, still icy. "Stay in the night, keep the doors locked, everything blocked, drive back through midday tomorrow. Or hush up and stay there and look out for yourself." She turns back around, grabbing her keys from the side table and holstering her gun – it's shiny and heavy-duty, and Puck wonders if it's custom made. "I'm not making detours for anyone. Not even you. Stay safe."

And then she hangs up and drops the phone on the side table, moving over to pick up her duffel again and stoically shouldering one of Puck's, too. He's a bit surprised – his was pretty heavy and hers looks like it is too, he thinks she should be buckling the least bit under the weight. She hardly seems affected by it as she nabs up a baseball bat from its spot next to Puck. Without another word she opens the front door and strolls out to Puck's truck, tossing both of the bags into the cargo bed. He hurriedly follows her lead, picking up two of the bags and packing them into his truck jerkily while she keeps a lookout around them. Finn follows them up with his load.

The streets are eerily silent, and even though it's getting dark out, it's really kind of ominous.

Rachel fiddles with her keyring until she finds the button for her garage, and Puck stands anxiously – not that he'd ever admit it – beside his truck, scanning the road and the houses around them for movement while the garage door rattles to life.

Taking a glance behind him, he pauses.

"Rach, is that..."

"A 1967 Chevy Imapala, yes," she tells him idly, but not without pride. Understandable. That is a _very_ nice car. He and Finn both stare as she shifts the baseball bat in her hands and looks longingly at the automatic shotgun Puck has taken to carrying, seemingly sighing to herself with resignation.

"This feels like a doped up episode of Supernatural," Finn says slowly, seemingly a little dazed by the day's events.

"I am the real life Dean Winchester," Rachel replies without hesitation, clearly humoured. She glances around again, eyes narrowing on a lone figure some ways down the road, and Puck is reminded of exactly what kind of situation they're in again.

She shoves the keys to Puck's truck back into his hand, making sure the bags are secure in the back before pushing him towards the front of the vehicle. She walks back to the front door of her house, retrieves her lockbox (testing kit obviously enclosed), and pulls the door closed to lock up in a flash, and then she's back beside him, tapping her foot because he's not in the car yet and glaring at Finn, who hasn't moved either.

"Puck, you'll need to drive your truck," she tells him simply, pushing him again. "Go to your house, make sure your sister and mother are safe. Grab whatever you need. Then Finn's house. Get Kurt – he's home this weekend, he said Blaine was coming over for the party too. Finn, pick up your truck when you get there. Find the rest of the club. If there's anyone else you want to save, this is your chance to do so. Meet me at McKinley in two hours. Get as much food as you can. And don't get bitten."

The short, precise words are a far stretch from her normal demeanour, but that's not what he thinks of when he sees her eyes flash a little dangerously – a little unnaturally, if he'll admit it, because he could swear for a second that there was a sickly yellow-green ring around her pupil, but it's getting dark and maybe he's hallucinating. He gets this bad feeling in his stomach – not because of this thing about her eyes, no. It's because she seems to be telling him they're splitting up.

And that shit doesn't fly too well with him, because he kind of wants to face the end of the world with Rachel Berry.

"And where will you be?" he asks gruffly, showing his disapproval in his tone and his short glare, and he knows she gets it because she quirks an eyebrow at him and pulls him in for a tight hug, assuring him she'll be fine (so clearly it's all on him to survive this one). She gives him a proper answer and a smirk before she goes off to her car and he rushes to get in his truck, forcing Finn in the passenger so they can get this shit over with ASAP.

"I've got a truck to hijack. May as well pick up Fabray on the way."

* * *

_So fed up, what's with the scenes? Observe and leave instead.  
__The pity wagon penetrates my skin - so sensitive, makes me sick.  
__And like before, makes no sense - never coming, always leaving  
__Right before, hooked on substance, dig in deeper, can't reveal_

_Why we leave well enough alone -  
Never thought about the shame._

_**Well Enough Alone, Chevelle**_

* * *

___R&R, yeah._


	3. My Delirium

_Disclaimer: essentially forever unnecessary. _

_Also, any spelling mistakes are a mix between my own inability to see them or the fact that we spell differently in Australia. Nah well._

* * *

**Look What Happened**  
My Delirium

* * *

_**One can generally assume the outbreak of the zombie apocalypse to be met with a certain scepticism.**_

_This is not untrue. In fact, it was this undeniable fact (honesty to the point of cold, hard stone) that played one of the largest parts in the spread. Human nature is defined by frailty and the employed ability of disbelief. A large number of people in Columbus on day one of the outbreak discussed with their husbands and wives and parents and sixth-cousins-twice-removed exactly how their workmates or roommates or friends on the bus - or Timmy from the craft class at kindergarten - got really gross and drooly and groaned a lot before nawing on their best friend's or partner's or teacher's arm. People immediately discounted such things as tall stories, rumours, lies, fictions for attention. When hard proof of such encounters was given, they blamed mentalities, medical issues, and Timmy's parents for not teaching him manners and proper social etiquette._

_Radio warnings went ignored. Television broadcasts were attributed to a hoax. People elected to live in a state of solid denial. Denial led them to continue with their ordinary, unprepared, open lives – an essential repetition, repetition, repetition that never changed and kept them in an unassuming and easily accessible state of practical stasis. Unpreparedness led to openness, openness to attack, attack to a bite, and a bite to infection. Rinse, wash, repeat. All because these people were sceptical, and, therefore, undefended._

_Those who survived, however – holed themselves up, or grabbed the nearest weapon, or made a mad dash for the nearest exit – were __**also**__ sceptics. The main differences in their doubts were the timing and the placement – specifically, __**before**__ the outbreak, and directly aimed at the seemingly perfect world possessed prior. The people who had seen one too many B-grade zombie films, played a little too much Resident Evil, or, of course, those genius people involved in the original research operation that had been sceptical enough of the project from the beginning to scheme for any eventuality. These were the people with plans, with immediate actions and reactions, without stasis. These were the people who __**moved**__, though the number of them was far inferior to that of the idiots who threw their doubts around post-apocalypse._

_Really, scepticism is a good thing – it's the timing that the world forgot to master._

**/-\**

Quinn sits awkwardly on the couch, Sam stiffly beside her.

Across the room, her mother and father sip from their drinks – scotch, obviously, because they only drink the expensive, hard liquor – and it's such a familiar scene that she _kind_ of wants to gag. Her dad hasn't moved back in yet, but her mother is hardly an independent soul, and when he returned spouting his crappy spiel on loneliness and realising what he'd lost and missing his family and treating her better in the future, Quinn knew it wouldn't be too long. So when she'd invited Sam to dinner, her mother had invited her father, and then it was a mess of tension and forced politeness, and the two elders resorted to alcohol while the youths resorted to silence.

Of course, for the sake of a formal meet session in the Fabray house, the television remained off, the participants remained in stiff, conservative clothing, and Quinn's mouth remained shut while her eyes remained open. Not to say there was anything worth interest to look at – looking at her father made her angry, her mother made her want to throw up, and Sam was just so _plain_ that it was _boring_. Her parents sip at their drinks on their armchairs, and Sam fiddles silently with his fingers, and Quinn resists the urge to forsake her good posture and lean her head on her hands and her arms on her knees, and slouch forward because it's tense and boring and awkward, and the night is just going so _slowly_.

So, understandably, the interruption of a moaning, blood-soaked individual crashing through the living room window is _just_ as relieving as it is traumatic.

Her father stares in shock, face steadily turning red as his anger ("home invasion," she imagines him saying, "how juvenile. What atrocious behaviour. You're a shame to your parents, and to the lord himself," and blah blah blah, religious preaching session continued) seeps past the shock. Sam sits stiffly in his seat and blinks at the intruder, surprised. Her mother screams shrilly and bolts out of the room – the woman hasn't moved that fast for so long as Quinn has lived, and the girl is momentarily impressed with her mother.

Then the thing starts lumbering towards her, its eerie moans causing a shudder to race down her spine. She's a teensy bit more concerned about the large shard of glass sticking out of the poor guy's neck than his approach – which, really, big mistake if she ever made one. He looks to be only a little older than her, his eyes milky and glazed over, and a sickly yellow-green beneath it, and his clothes are torn and muddy, and blood stains him quite evidently. He reaches out a grimy hand to her, and she quirks an eyebrow.

For all intents and purposes, this window-breaking asshole appears to be a zombie. Yeah, right. Obviously, her evening got so boring that she's fallen asleep on the couch or something. Because zombies? Not real.

Also, there's no way Judy Fabray could ever move that fast. Ever. Ergo, _dreaming_.

That in mind, she doesn't bother to move. Instead, she snorts at the approaching hand, and relaxes back into the couch behind her while Sam hops hurriedly to his feet and lurches forward to shove the murky-eyed guy back towards the window.

Except, that doesn't really work, because the guy stumbles back and the jagged piece of glass in his neck shudders a little and fall out of his body, and blood gushes everywhere, and he rights himself and starts walking forward again, undaunted. Sam swears, and Russel sputters, and someone throws a vase at the zombie's head, but it doesn't really do much.

"Holy shit, Quinn, move!" Sam yells, and when she doesn't he grabs her by the wrist and yanks her off the couch and towards the door of the room. She doesn't leave, though – just stops by the doorway and watches her father and her boyfriend as they try to fight off the bloody, drooling intruder – knocking him down only for him to get back up again. There's a flash of headlights and a screech of tires outside, some loud alternative rock music playing from a car stereo, and Quinn hears her mum shrieking something about ruining the lawn from somewhere upstairs (figures, really, for Judy to be more concerned about the front lawn than the zombie in the living room, even if she _is_ dreaming).

The next thing she knows, Rachel Berry is jumping through her broken living room window in jeans and a leather jacket, a baseball bat in her hand and a rather bemused expression on her face. She strolls across the room, grabs the back of the zombie's shirt just before it can get within biting distance of a now almost cowering, defenceless Sam, and yanks it back to the centre of the room. Rachel releases the poor guy's shirt, takes a few steps away, and jiggles the baseball bat in her hand, sizing up the tall zombie quickly.

"Batter up," the brunette drawls out with a scowl, and in a sudden, snappy motion she brings the steel bat to the back of the thing's leg. Like every bad zombie film, the creature slumps after a loud, gross crunch, leg bent at an unnatural and sickening angle. But it doesn't fall down, and Quinn watches with wide eyes as dream-Rachel (because, really, the only reason Rachel would ever look hot and slay zombies would be if she was having a really bad nightmare) brings the bat down again to the back of the zombie's knee. It groans, slumping to its knees in the middle of the Fabray living room.

The bat drops a third time, aiming for the head, but a bloody arm – are those _bite_ marks? – raises just in time to take the blow, the other hand clawing restlessly for the offending weapon and yanking it away from the brunette. Quinn watches as brown eyes narrow, lips purse, and then there's a stunning roundhouse kick to the back of the loudly groaning zombie's head (that _crunches_, and really, _ew_, her dreams are pretty graphic, what was _in_ that casserole?), and blood sprays, and everything goes silent when the body finally hits the floor, releasing the baseball bat and staying motionless this time.

"Poor bastard," Rachel grumbles in the silence, glancing down at her boots and tapping them on the carpet, staining it with red in an attempt to get the mushy gristle off of her shoes. "Knew I should have invested in steel-toed instead. Definitely stings my toes a little less."

The girl taps her shoes on the ground a few more times – the repeated quiet thud being the only break in the silence of the house – before looking up to glance around at her audience.

"_Well_?" is all she says, impatient and ever-so-slightly haughty. "What the fuck are you guys doing, anyway? Go _pack_ some shit."

"How dare you, young lady! I will not have that filthy language in my house!" Russel roars, earning a simultaneous blink from both of the blonde teenagers and a quirked eyebrow from the brunette.

"..._Right_..." Rachel replies dryly, drawing the word out lazily and moving over to nudge the dead body on the ground with her boot. With a sigh, having ascertained the zombie to be well and truly dead, she nabs the baseball bat back up from the ground, spinning it easily in her hand. "Okay, look preacher - never mind the fact that last I heard you didn't _reside_ in this lovely household any longer because you were a hypocritical, arrogant infidel - I just bashed in the brains of a zombie in your living room. I'm going to assume your offensive reaction is due more to shock than actual concern, but whatever. I'm pretty sure my pottymouth isn't that high on your list of important _issues_."

"Insolence!"

"Stupidity!" Rachel yells back in practically the same tone, obviously mocking, and Quinn watches on wondering whether it would be appropriate to laugh at this point of her trippy dream. "Have any of you guys looked at a television in the last two hours? No? Radio?" At the negative responses, the brunette huffs and tosses the baseball bat to Sam, who fumbles with it for a moment, and puts her hands on her hips unhappily. "Okay, here's your rundown. Super secret government facility in Columbus goes postal roughly three days ago. Test subject for biological weaponry escapes. Virus takes over his body, he comes in contact with free citizens, infection spreads, and - _viola!_ - now we have the zombie apocalypse."

"Grade?" Sam asks lightly, nodding to himself, and Quinn scoffs a little. It's just like him to take the zombie apocalypse as a fact (ignoring the body on the floor and the slight spray of blood still splayed on Rachel's cheeks), let alone from Rachel Berry. _Geek_.

"I'd rate it somewhere between Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead," Rachel replies idly, shrugging to herself but still rather thoughtful. Dream-Rachel, Quinn decides, is ultimately cooler than normal Rachel. For one thing, the way she talks is a little less annoying than normal, and she apparently has some knowledge of modern pop culture. For another, she doesn't dress atrociously. In fact, she's kind of gorgeous – even with a little bit of blood splatter on her face. "Maybe more Zombieland, actually."

"Team?"

"Puck and Finn. But they're rallying."

"Guns?"

"Puck's truck by majority. There's a couple in my trunk."

"Destination?"

"McKinley High School," Rachel replies promptly, head lolling around to fix an idle stare on Quinn, brow quirking, and with an evident 'why are you still here?' on the tip of her tongue. It gets the blonde's blood boiling – and not entirely from irritation, either. Oh god. This is definitely a dream. She is totally dreaming. Or going insane – yeah, insanity is definitely a viable excuse. "But we need to make a detour to that construction site on Smithson street first. Quinn, why aren't you _moving_?"

"What?" she manages to ask, earning only a frown to her continued blinking.

"Zombie apocalypse? I'd rather like to get on the road and, you know, somewhere slightly safer than the rather indefensible home of the resident Christ crusaders," the brunette says quickly, exasperatedly, cutting off Russel's tirade before it even begins by flipping him the bird and a death glare. "Shut your face, papa-Fabray." Then, to Quinn. "Is '_packing your things_' striking you as a necessary option? Because if not, I am _totally_ okay with just getting in the car and leaving. Less skin off my back that way, really."

"...Why am I packing?"

"So we can ditch the house, drive off into the night, and get my grand-theft-auto-slash-zombie-avoidance plan underway," Rachel replies quickly, if dryly, stepping across to the doorway and waving her hands a little in Quinn's direction. "Come on, Fabray. Unless you want my manhands on your overtly feminine shoulders, you'll get your tiny ass moving."

When she hesitates to move, Rachel rolls her eyes and steps forward, reaches out and turns her around, pushing her towards the staircase and earning a faint shudder on contact.

"Lead me to your room, princess," the brunette grumbles, throwing a small glower at Russel and Sam over her shoulder. She gives the blonde girl a somewhat stiff shove when the cheerleader hesitates again. "You two manly men better keep an eye out. And aim for the _head_."

Quinn doesn't fight her. She's still waiting to wake up.

**/-\**

She manages to get half way through packing her cheerios duffel bag, stuffing in whatever clothing Rachel had chucked on the bed when she went through the drawers earlier, before she freaks out.

It's bound to happen, and obviously enough, this is when she realises that she's not going to wake up, and she's either in a full-on coma in the real world, or this _is_ the real world. She doesn't know which option is scarier, really, because in one instance she's probably lying motionless in a hospital bed and getting fed through a tube, but in the other Rachel Berry is currently washing blood off of her face in her bathroom.

"This can't be happening," she mutters to herself, and she stops packing, and she stops breathing. "This can _not_ be happening. Zombie apolcalypse. _Pah_! No, it's not happening."

The more she says it, the less she believes it. And suddenly, she can't breathe properly and her knees go weak, and she sinks to the ground and puts her head in her hands while black spots dance in and out of her vision. She doesn't hear the footsteps approaching, or register another immediate presence until there are arms around her and she's being pulled against rough material and _warmth_.

"Inhale, Quinn," she's told gently, but stiffly enough. It's as much a command as a comfort. "Long and slow. With me." She can feel the rise and fall of her companion's chest, and tries her hardest to calm her shaky, weak breaths to share her timing. "Good. You're doing great," Rachel says, fingers brushing blonde hair back from hazel eyes, even though they're locked blankly on the floor, unseeing. "In and out. Just like that. Hyperventilating isn't going to get you anywhere right now. I need you to stay calm and _not_ panic."

Which is about the time she realises that the person holding her and helping her to breathe is Rachel Berry, and that's all kinds of uncool. She doesn't push her away though – not yet. She feels so warm, and it's comforting to be in contact with someone – _anyone_. She hasn't even left her house yet, but the whole world is falling apart around her – shaky and distant and fleeting, and disregarding her entirely.

Rachel's not. Rachel's right there. Rachel knows what to do.

"Do you want me to pack the rest for you?" the brunette asks gently, and Quinn feels herself swallow thickly and shake her head. Her hands come up to the smooth skin of that arm that's encasing her, and she takes a grip to it and tightens, just for a second.

"Could you just – just for a little bit – not let go?" she hears herself asking, and it irks her somewhere in her brain that she's asking that of anyone, let alone _Rachel Berry_. Then again, at least it's not as much of a pansy phrase as '_hold me_'. But then she keeps talking. "I know you're on a schedule, but… just... _please_?"

She expects a protest, or a rant about the time they're wasting, or for Rachel to scoff and push her away, or insult her, or call her out on her weakness – something like that. They aren't friends, they never have been, and for as long as Quinn can remember (bar those few times last year that Rachel offered her kind words and support and she slapped them back in the singer's face) they've had nothing but complete animosity between them, and for no particular reason. Rachel's always gotten her hackles raised, and she doesn't know why.

So Quinn's not expecting the girl to let out a quiet "okay," and pull her in tighter, and stay silent. But that's what happens.

"Why are we going to McKinley?" she asks eventually - doesn't know how many seconds or minutes have passed, but she's warm, and maybe she's not entirely comfortable down on the floor, but at least she feels safe. "Isn't it too much space?"

"Better than too little," is the reply she gets. Makes sense.

"And the construction site?"

"There's something I need to get there," Rachel tells her simply, tanned fingers still running through blonde hair while Quinn stares wide-eyed at the floor and lets out a shuddery breath. This is just too damned _weird_. Unfamiliar, unreal. "I'm not asking you to go with me. You and Sam can have my car. Drop me and drive."

There's a silence for a few moments, but then it starts to nag at her. It's not unusual for Rachel to take command of a situation, to be in the know, to lead despite protests and insults and disbelief – the girl has a plan for everything and an abundance of knowledge, but Quinn doesn't understand why she has a plan for _this_. She doesn't understand what's going on, only what Rachel tells her. She doesn't understand why Rachel's telling her, doesn't comprehend why Rachel _can_. So she hazards it, quietly, trying to stave back that fear that she's feeling, because it's the end of the world outside and all she has is the brunette beside her.

"…Why do you know what to do, Rachel?" and she hates asking because some part of her knows she won't like the answer, but she seeks out those brown eyes anyway. The girl just looks at her and shrugs.

"Not now, Quinn," the brunette mutters, and she gets it. It's not a quick explanation, and it's not the right time to give it, and she's not the first person to ask. But she needs to know. She needs to _not_ be unaware, she needs to feel in _control_ of something, and maybe not now but _soon_.

"Later?"

"Promise," is all the reply she gets, and then those arms release her when she wishes they'd linger, and Rachel gets to her feet and turns back to the bed with a frown. She picks out a couple of items from the clothing pile on the covers – there's denim and leather, and Quinn realises part of it's probably from their Start Me Up/Livin' On A Prayer mash-up because she doesn't think she owns any other leather at all – and drops them in Quinn's lap. "Go get changed. You don't want to any part of you to be easily bitten. If you've got any cuts on you, I want you to cover them. I'll finish with your bag. Anything you want that's sentimental, you'll have to get yourself. Can't take a lot, though."

She nods and obeys, because she might not like taking blind orders from Rachel Berry, but it's the best that she's got right now. In hindsight, she'll probably be thankful for it.

**/-\**

She follows Rachel down the stairs, and it's the first time she notices the almost perfectly concealed bulge on either side of the girl's jacket.

It's indicative, and certainly not difficult to figure out that the girl is hiding _guns_ under there, and a part of Quinn is sure to tell her that Rachel Berry carrying firearms just wouldn't happen. A large, and mostly ignored part of her, is entirely thankful for the prospect, and for a multitude of different reasons.

For instance, if Rachel is indeed carrying some kind of gun, that's totally extra protection from the gross, drooly zombies beyond the front door. Also, the idea of the girl wielding weaponry of any kind is both a tinge scary, and kind of... _intriguing_. She'll go with that. Intriguing. Naming it anything else is borderline blasphemous. And now that she's realised she's not dreaming, she can't use descriptors like 'hot', 'sexy', or 'totally worth drooling over'. But more because they're totally untrue anyway – particularly in relation to Rachel Berry – and she was just experiencing a temporary break from her sanity earlier. Really. Rachel is _totally_ not hot, and even if she were, Quinn is not like _that_.

Still, she can't help but admire the way those jeans fit those amazing legs, and she kind of wishes that jacket was just a bit shorter, so maybe then she could follow those legs with her eyes up to that gorgeous-

"-_Fuck_," the blonde mutters to herself, earning a curious, gleaming brown gaze and feeling a flush brush across her cheeks. _I was not just thinking that. Wasn't. Didn't happen._

She doesn't elaborate. Rachel doesn't ask.

"Hey, Rachel!" she hears called from her living room, and she's reminded of the blonde boy with the geek streak, that she is both dating and undeniably attracted to, and who is apparently taking this better than she is. Understandable. He probably has his own contingency plan for all apocalyptic occasions, following his repeated viewing of every relevant film _ever_. "Is that an impala?"

She doesn't see the beaming smile on the brunette's face because she's stepping off the staircase ahead of Quinn with her back turned, but she does see the bounce in the girl's step as she flounces off into the living room. She's proud of something. Her car, presumably.

_Boys and their cars_, she thinks. Exasperation. _And Rachel_.

"It is indeed," the girl tells Sam cheerily. "I see you have an appreciation for fine automobiles. Fortunate, really, because if you didn't then I wouldn't be able to let you drive it, and I have an utter refusal of letting Quinn behind the wheel of my baby just on principal. And if neither of you were appropriate candidates for driving there would be a huge problem with my plan, and I would need to call Finn and make him bring _Kurt_ over here - which would hinder _their_ mission and delay _ours_. And, really, we're on a _schedule_ here."

Quinn rolls her eyes, but then she remembers that she spent more than ten dream-like minutes sitting on her bedroom floor with Rachel's arms around her and those soothing fingers tangled in her hair while she broke down. Surely that messed with the schedule. But Rachel didn't complain. She let Quinn have her time, let her freak out and hyperventilate and get over it so she could readily (as much as one could be during the zombie apocalypse, anyway) adjust.

"Now, hold on, you _delinquent_," comes her father's voice from the doorway, and Quinn looks over to see him with his wife (or ex, or future, or whatever) shakily beside him, and his handgun in his stiff fingers. She hasn't seen that thing in a _very_ long time, and coupled with the deep purple hue to his face – he's been working himself for the entire twenty minutes she's been upstairs, by her quick estimation – it isn't really the best of all situations. In fact, Quinn holds a little bit of fear about it. "You're going to get the _hell_ out of this house right this _instant_-"

"Indeed I am," Rachel interrupts drolly, as though it was a stupid question rather than an enraged demand, and Russel flounders for a moment, startled by both the agreement and the interruption. Quinn tries to catch the girl's eye – to shake her head with a '_no, stop now, stop talking, you'll only make this worse_' – but Rachel ignores her in favour of staring at her purple-faced, heavily breathing father. "It's kind of the _plan_. I have zombies to kill and heavy-duty trucks to steal. I'd really rather not waste another minute of my all-too valuable time in the presence of a cheating, lying, hypocritical bigot like yourself."

And Quinn watches her father fume and raise his gun.

"You'll get out of this house. You will _not_ be taking my daughter with you. You have ten seconds to vacate the premises before I pull the trigger."

And then Quinn kind of wants to catch _his_ eye and give _him_ that telling shake of the head that says '_shut the fuck up you dumb old crone, __**you'll**__ only make this worse_'. Unfortunately, she neither has the drive, nor the chance. Firstly, she knows her father wouldn't listen to her in any situation and for any reason. Secondly, Rachel has a heavy-looking handgun out of her hidden holster and levelled directly at the man before she can open her mouth.

Rachel doesn't speak right away, letting the other occupants of the room blink at her in shock, but the still expression on the brunette's face – calm, collected, icy – speaks volumes. It's a reassurance somehow, beneath the tendrils of fear that are slipping down her spine, that Rachel knows what she's doing. Because she has a deadly weapon aimed unflinchingly at a seemingly hyperventilating Russel Fabray, and she's totally comfortable with the situation.

"Threatening the one person rocking up on your doorstep with the survival plans," Rachel calls out to the man, her voice low and deadly, and then she _tuts_ at the man and shakes her head with a sardonic smirk. "Now, now, Mister Fabray – where _are_ your manners? Here's how this is going to go. You have three seconds to lower your weapon, sir, before I shoot you right through your left eye and spray your beloved wife with your own brain matter." The tone is hazardous and entirely serious, and Quinn watches her father swallow thickly, half waiting for him to pull the trigger of his own weapon just to prove himself the more dangerous of the two – a mistake, she thinks, because something tells her that Rachel Berry is _very_ dangerous. But then, the absolutely impossible happens.

He lowers his gun.

"Very good," Rachel says stiffly, but she doesn't lower her own firearm. "_Very_ good decision indeed. Here's how this is going to work. Quinn is going to drop her things in my trunk. She and Sam are going to get in my car. We are going to leave." Russel opens his mouth to interrupt, face still crudely coloured, and Rachel cocks the gun in her hand pointedly, cutting him off before he starts. "Nuh-uh," she directs. "I'm the one calling the shots here. Which sounds remarkably like the tagline of the antagonistic criminal character in any common psychological thriller film, but whatever. I'm the one with the plan, and it's entirely up to me whether or not you're included in it. I couldn't really care less either way – honestly, leaving you all to rot is probably better in terms of my own survival, and yet, here I am. So you're all going to graciously listen while I speak at you. Not to. At. There will be no talking back."

She quirks her brow, waiting for a quick response and earning a bare nod from all assembled.

"Outstanding," she replies, sounding so absurdly similar to Coach Sylvester that Quinn can only blink and stare. "After our little detour, Ken and Barbie will be driving my precious car to the school. Puck's going to meet them there, with enough weaponry to equip a small army. We're going to safely barricade ourselves in, take shifts, and plan our next move." Sam nods a little in his place, clearly understanding, baseball bat shifting lightly in his hands. "As for you, Mister and Missus Fabray – well, I don't particularly care what happens to either of you. Can't say I really know why I care what happens to your daughter, either, but I am known for my _absurd_ amount of loyalty and my inability to take the logical route in _any_ situation. Case and point, Quinn Fabray will be coming with me, and if anyone protests I'm going to shoot them."

Something tells Quinn she would, too. Probably a damn good thing she hasn't even considered objecting.

"My recommendation would be to pack whatever you think you'll need, dump it in your car, and drive to join us – preferably _without_ swapping blood or getting bitten by one of the infected. It's probably the safest option," the brunette explains quickly. "But if you would like to stay here, just the two of you, and wait for the grumblies to come a-knockin', well, that's okay too. Again, I don't really give a damn either way. But I'm not coming back to save your asses. Are we clear?"

She earns another resigned nod from all assembled, and for a moment Quinn is amazed by the humility this girl has dragged, kicking and screaming, from her parents. Some part of her still toys with the idea that this is all a dream, but if she hasn't woken up from it now, then she probably won't. This is likely reality. And it's shitty, but she thinks it's about to get thrilling.

"Good. Now, let's get moving, Fabray, Evans – I have zombies to mow down with my car and a construction site to loot like crazy."

And thrilling is definitely one way of putting it. She finds herself delegated to the back seat for the first leg of their ride, while Rachel careens the car down the roads in the evening, mostly lit by streetlights, and Sam whoops in the front passenger seat. Quinn grips her seat tightly every time they swerve, speeding, and the occasional _thunk_ indicates a poor night-roamer getting hit by the car before crunching beneath the tyres (Rachel cackles gleefully behind the wheel, like it's a game and they aren't real people that she's smacking off the road with hulking metal and high speed), and she doesn't know what to think about it. This is the end of the world, those are human beings, where is the _fun_ in this?

But she doesn't ask. Instead, she tries to lose herself in the sounds of the stereo and ignore the rest, and the car ride passes quickly. Too quickly.

Before she knows it, Rachel's out of the vehicle, the door shut behind her, guns holstered, bat in hand, and Sam jumps over the centre console to take the wheel while Quinn finds herself scrambling up to his previous seat. She has a brief moment of fear – Rachel's been weird as hell this evening, but she knows what to do and she's _strong_, somehow, and she's _safe_, but now she's gone. They're only parked out the front of the empty construction site – bright lights in there and silence and a lot of dirt – for as long as it takes for Sam to adjust his car seat.

Then they're speeding off towards the school, and Rachel's left alone.

* * *

_Still here in this quiet room, deep in delusion sending me over  
Outside watch the world go by, inside time stands still as I wonder_

_Still hanging on - for what? Can't operate, fired up  
I won't eat and I won't sleep for you yeah  
No rest till I get through, 'cause I'm holding out for you  
Am I the only one who's insane?_

_Hey you're playing with my delirium  
And the longer I wait the harder I'm gonna fall  
Stop playing with my delirium  
'cause I'm out of my head and out of my self-control_

_**My Delirium, Ladyhawke**_

_**

* * *

**_

_R&R, because it's super cool when you do.**  
**_


	4. Byrds Of Prey

_Disclaimer: blah blah blah and repeat.  
_

* * *

**Look What Happened**  
Byrds Of Prey

* * *

**_The TVXK virus was not originally created with the intention of infecting half a continent._**

_This is not to say that infecting half a continent wasn't an idea from the beginning – as a matter of fact, it was an idea that was thrown around restlessly before the research team was even put together. Rather, it was not the main concept of the TVXK division until eleven or so years after the unit's creation, only a sidelined possibility for the future._

_As it happens, TVXK was created firstly with the intention of being a gift, later a disease. Again, it was designed with a specific use in war, but with the focus being on the user's own troops rather than the enemy's. To enhance a soldier's abilities – make them faster, stronger, not as a general physical state of being, but rather to give them the ability to tap into an adrenaline high at will, instead of when the right conditions were met. _

_An adrenaline rush, for those unaware, is the fermentation of muscles at an increased rate due to the release of epinephrine from the adrenal gland (and this naturally happens due to anxiety; it's a fight-or-flight response). Muscles are stronger – you can hit harder, run faster. Now, imagine squadrons of human beings, pre-trained and tactically efficient, able to call upon and totally control an adrenaline rush. Draw it out for as long as desired. Utilise it until the body simply couldn't anymore. _

_Super soldiers, the government wanted._

_This goal was quickly fulfilled – with drawbacks. Those affected by the virus – tested like lab rats – were, with the correct training, capable of drawing out a practical adrenaline rush on command, yes. But to control it? No, they weren't at all able – not in the beginning. The rush was too much. The virus got into the system, overloaded it, and several died from the strain. Some were pushed too hard into exhaustion – reacting in the ways of perhaps falling asleep without reawakening, all the way through to simply being unable to move their own bodies for days at a time. Or, ever, in some cases, where the disease strained a body to a mostly permanent paralysis. The worst of reactions, of course, was the lack of control not **of** the elevated state, but of one's own **body** while in that state – a practical berserker mode, where the body rebelled until the mind was just a passenger to death and destruction. Subjects found their eye colour changing to a sickly yellow, frothing at the mouth was not uncommon, and they were known to, on occasion, take a bite out of their victims, though at this time a bite did not cause the virus to spread. Subjects were unstoppable, short of a shot to the head. And ravenous, which was frankly disturbing._

_They refined it, of course. Many years and many tests later, and the TVXK virus was more highly understood, more easily mutated to design. The younger the subject, the easier the control was to learn. The effects of the virus were lessened from the beginning – quite a shame – but so was the backlash, and it was an allowance made. The added strength was not as high as anticipated, though still heightened, but at least the subjects were dying and falling into comas and biting chunks out of their ward mates. The division continued refining, testing, making new models for eleven years – and their subjects were volunteers, of course. Youths told tales of serving their countries, or helping their families, or simply those with nothing and no one to tie them to another life. Fools, and idiots, and courageous souls, and people young and naive enough to sign on the dotted line without really understanding the contract._

_And so, the division had what they wanted. And it was almost perfect. And the government could easily have stepped back and quit the reigns and taken their victory with open arms. But then, humanity always has a habit of wanting to take their cake and eat it too, and success is never good enough. So, naturally, they wanted more. And then somebody in a white coat looked at his computer through thick, horn-rimmed glasses, and looked back at the negative side effects of the genetic anomaly during the first three years of the projects, and remembered that sidelined notion of biological warfare, and he tapped his chin and cleaned his glasses and thought to himself "now, why not look into that?"._

_What a freaking charmer._

**/-\**

Rachel purses her lip, staring out over the empty lot.

_Seemingly_ empty. And she reminds herself to never assume, because that would just be a generally fucking stupid thing to do during the zombie apocalypse. And Rachel Berry is many things – amazing, stealthy, super talented, just all-around flawless – but '_fucking stupid_' is not one of them.

And, well, yeah, the construction site _looks_ empty, but she's not taking chances on that. So she taps the bat in her hand against her boot and stretches out her arms slowly. Knocks out the crick in her neck before letting a crunch of boots on gravel lead her slowly into empty space, washed out by bright white lights, held high, shining down on dust and dirt and metal. Links her fingers and cracks them loudly when she's standing in the middle of nowhere – doesn't garner a response, but it doesn't put her at ease. She knows better.

She looks over at the six-stories of scaffolding to one side of the lot, plastic coverings torn and fluttering silently in the breeze, washed in white light, shipping crates stacked up to the third floor beside it, and she holds back a shudder. This is like a freaking video game level. She's waiting for the horde to fall upon her like a whiny little bitch, and fuck's sake, where the fuck is that truck she's looking for?

She spots it – kicks up a bit of dust when she traipses towards it, but not enough to really matter. It's a hulking vehicle, stacked up on the back with bricks and bags of concrete mix and planks of wood, sitting idle to the side of the lot, lined up beside another few trucks – pick-ups and cabs for the night workers that seem to have mysteriously disappeared beneath the washed-out white lights. She crouches a little to look beneath the truck before she's too close to it – movie-viewing experience and common sense has taught her well enough that certain evil doers and creatures-of-the-night have enough smarts left in them to hide in practical crawlspace, and Rachel Berry is not now (nor will she ever be) dumb enough to be tripped up by a hypothetical bogeyman. Also, the feeling of a hand wrapping around your ankle is a distinctly creepy one, if her eighth-grade Summer 'theatre camp' (suspicious cough and shifty eyes included) is anything to go by.

Which, really, it is.

But there's nothing beneath this particular truck, so she counts herself lucky and moves towards the truck's cab, reaching up for the driver's side door and giving a yank on the handle. The plan's simple, really – steal the truck, head for McKinley, bunker up for the apocalypse, plan out escape. Only, simplicity, much like truth, is relative in this post-modern environment Rachel Berry inhabits, and so, when she yanks on the handle, for two obvious reasons – the first unforseen, the second sincerely hoped against – the plan ceases to be simple.

Firstly, the door is locked. Trivial, really.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, there is gravel crunching beneath heavy boots some ways behind her – ergo, not her own.

Now, obviously, this hinders her plans, and unfortunately her first inclination is to freeze. Not because of the door – the locked truck, though unaccounted for in her planning, is not specifically the largest issue for one super-talented actress and self-appointed zombie-slayer Rachel Berry. No – she'll just have to find the keys, her mind tells her, and then the lock won't be a problem at all. It's the crunching gravel that's the problem. Because her feet haven't moved in the last fifteen seconds, and that sound is not from the ground beneath her boots. Which means there's someone else here – behind her, seemingly, back a few metres, and her inward paranoia informs her that the likelihood of them being healthy, lucid and clear-eyed isn't all that high.

It worries her – she'll admit it, now that no one else is around her. She doesn't have to direct Puck through the steps and the shock, or bully Mister Fabray into action (or inaction, or anything at all), or hold Quinn together while the world falls apart. Right now she's the only one around, and the only person she has to be strong for is herself. Pressure's off about keeping up appearances, she thinks (all in a flash, of course), but then she slowly turns herself around and faces the source of the crunching gravel – hulking muscled man in dark jeans and a red shirt – which wasn't red originally, but the blood soaking out from his neck wound has changed it, and she can't tell what it was before. Steel-toed boots and a tool belt, ten metres from her and in the middle of empty space, and she doesn't know where he's come from.

He leers at her – mouth drops open with a touch of foam around his bloody teeth, dirt staining his chiselled jaw, eyes a sickly yellow beneath the misty white. Rachel tightens her grip on the bat in her hands – doesn't move for a second, just stares at him and calculates her options. He's too big to take down easy, with a bat, and she's betting he could make the distance between them before she had her gun out and sufficiently aimed. There's a truck straight behind her and a small portable building to her left – fifty metres, probably where the keys are. Too far to run, though. And there's a flutter of plastic from the scaffolding – twenty metres to her left, almost beckoning with the breeze. Split decision before the dead worker jolts forward into action, and then she's spinning on lithe legs and dashing on towards the scaffold.

Distraction. Escape. Pressure's on about staying alive.

**/-\**

When Puck walks outside (duffel bag slung promptly over his shoulder, baseball bat in his hand, Kurt Hummel trudging along behind him in a designer leather jacket with his keys in his hands) Finn is running in circles around Puck's pick-up and shrieking like a girl.

Traditionally – and, despite the morbidity of the zombie apocalypse – Puck is bemused before he is concerned. Mostly because, evidently, Finn has at some point dropped his bat, and like fuck Puck is going to hand the idiot any kind of live ammunition in _any_ lifetime, least of all this one. Secondly, at some point the lumbering idiot has managed to pick up a very interested – but apparently not-too-active – drooling stalker. And, yeah, maybe Puck should be concerned that his pseudo-ex-best-friend is being chased by a hungry zombie, but Finn's running around the truck and screaming like a broken record, or a girl or something, and, really, Puck's just kind of pissed that the large boy couldn't look after himself and hold onto a bat for three minutes alone.

So he drops the bag on the doorstep with Hummel and strides out towards his truck and hefts his bat up, and when Finn makes the next pass he swings just after him and the drooling fucker takes it straight to the face. There's this sickening squelching thud, and a crack, and Puck feels a little sick – this is real, after all, a real person, and his mouth tingles with the thought of a baseball bat ever meeting his teeth in any capacity – but he bites back the hint of bile in his throat and swings his bat down on the grounded zombie twice more before relenting.

_Head_, he thinks, because Rachel told him. _Double-tap_, he remembers, because Zombieland was fucking legendary.

And then he's sure the poor infected kid is dead – for real this time – and he doesn't look at the body again. Just grabs Finn by the collar and shoves him forcefully towards the house with a grimace he covers with a scowl.

"Don't drop your bat again, fucktard," is all he says about it, barely paying attention to Kurt as he picks up the duffel bag and heaves it over to Puck's truck. Even as the bag gets hauled into the bed of Puck's pick-up a bunch of the Gleeks are trailing out of the house, carrying crates of food and whatever other shit they've stolen from the Hummel-Hudson household – lucky fucking thing that Finn was throwing a party, really, even if it was to spite Rachel. Trust the idiot to finally throw a rager right in time for the apocalypse. It was an all-gleek pre-party, apparently, because none of the jocks or cheerleaders have shown up yet, and some of them are probably stumbling around town with a hankering for human flesh but whatever, Puck doesn't care so much about them, and the Gleeks are all here (except Rachel, and Quinn, and Sam, and Brittany and Santana, but he doesn't worry about them so much because he trusts his Jewish princess a _lot_ further than he could throw her, and B is probably with S, and like _hell_ Santana would be brought down by something as insignificant as zombies).

They all pack up the back of Puck's truck, and then he hands out a couple of baseball bats – mostly to the boys, and Lauren – and hands Tina a shotgun from Rachel's 'special' bag, because she apparently knows how to use it – he's not sure if he wants to know the story behind that, but this definitely wouldn't be the time if he did. He gets Finn's help in moving Artie from his wheelchair to the back seat of Kurt's Escalade (parked promptly in the driveway, he notes), and then shoves his chair in the boot. Kurt and Blaine get in the front, and Mercedes jumps in the back, and Puck shoves Finn over too just because he doesn't want to look at the guy anymore, and then, like clockwork, Santana pulls up at the curb with a scowl and Brittany smiling in the passenger seat.

"The fuck, Puckerman?" she calls out to him. "The midget sent me a message about zombies – wasn't gonna believe her until I caught my neighbour chomping on his dog – and told me to '_report'_ here to you like you're my fucking boss or something? What the fuck is going on?"

He gives her a one-finger salute, and strides over to the car to hand her a pistol and give her directions, and she scowls and grumbles at him, but he knows she'll follow his lead. Santana talks a lot of shit, but she can be a team player. Particularly when deep shit is involved.

"We're gonna bunker down in McKinley. You have a little less than an hour to get there – Rachel's, you know, organised," he says a little dryly, but not contesting it. "If there's anyone you want to warn, now would be the time."

"The parentals are out of town this weekend," is her dull reply. "They went with Britt's folks and the Hummels or Hudsons or whatever the flying fuck on some fucking vacation I didn't care about because I'd get to party. So no fucking dice, Puckerman."

"Take a road trip for Chang-squared and Zizes, then."

"I'm not a fucking cab service!" Santana hisses back, earning a soothing hand on her shoulder from the blonde behind her. Puck isn't fazed – she's always been a bit quick to blow up, but especially when she's under pressure. And she's about to be under a lot of pressure. "You do it!"

"Look, we have forty minutes to get our shit together and get to the school, S, and I need to go pick up my sister and my mom, so either buck the fuck up and help out your teammates beforehand or go and wait in the school parking lot for an hour until the cavalry arrives. I don't fucking care," he tells her bluntly, and he's being intentionally short with her. He knows she'll do what he says. She just needs to be actually _told_. "But I'd prefer it if you'd be productive."

She glares at him. "Fine. But I better get fucking paid for this or something."

He retreats from the car, sends the three over there, then jumps into his own truck on the lawn and manages to kick it into gear almost as fast as Rachel did the first time. Thinks he'll have to work on that. He leaves before the other two cars, doesn't turn the stereo on, drives to nothing but silence. It's dark out, now, and he kind of wishes he'd kept one of the gleeks to himself. As long as it wasn't Finn he would have been cool. Because the anticipation now is kind of sickening – gut-wrenching and all that shit with the 'what ifs'.

The streets are dead, and the closer he gets to his house the more he wants to barf.

**/-\**

She tries to quieten her steps on the metal, and the wooden planks beneath her, let herself fade off into the rustle of plastic and the whistle of the breeze. But as it seems, she's not the only one capable of sinking into the background noise, and she can barely see past the semi-opaque plastic.

Every silent breath in reminds her that this was a fucking bad idea.

She should have just shot the fucker in the head. Then she wouldn't be three stories up in fucking scaffolding trying to hide from an undead builder who, despite his massive size, was apparently super stealthy. Practical silence amidst flapping plastic, and the white wash from the lights around the lot, and fuck, this was practically a b-grade serial killer movie scene. Ethereal and all that shit. She is so going to die right here.

She hears a creak and stops moving. Waits another moment and hears it again. From her left, and... _up_? But up means the floor above her and – wait, how would he have gotten up there without going past her and – mother_fucker_, there's another creak behind her that is _definitely_ on this level and there are two zombies in this shithole death trap of a motherfucking horror game level that she decided was a brilliant idea to utilize and _how freaking dumb was that_?

Sucks in a breath and tightens her grip on the baseball bat while she takes a few steps forward, finds herself at the edge of the structure and looking down to the empty lot. Strains her ears for any sounds and strains her eyes for an escape. Which, admittedly, is when she remembers the shipping crates, and turns a nice ninety degrees to see them down at the edge of her level. They're stacked, kind of, the top one coming up maybe forty centimetres above the level of her feet, and getting down from the top should be a bit like jumping down stairs, she thinks. Large stairs, admittedly, but not as large as a full three story drop. It's a clear path, about ten metres. Straight jump across, maybe a little far, but she thinks she can swing it. Better than being caught between poles and construction gear with two burly zombies.

She hears another creak of wood, closer this time, and figures that taking the time to weigh the pros and cons of all of this would be a distinctly dumb idea. And so she bolts towards the edge, furrows her brow, and her footstep are loud and another set picks up behind her, blood rushing, pounding loud in her ears while her heart beats erratically, and she feels heat – in her cheeks, her head, her hands. Can't feel her feet when they bound against planks, and her mouth is dry, and she swallows nothing, but it's thick while her legs pump, and then she's at the edge and leaping, flying.

Falling.

Flails out with an arm in the split second it takes for her to realise and grasps the edge of the crate. She doesn't feel her body smack into the side of the metal, but she knows she will in the morning. There's a rush of air and something jumps over her, thumps to the top of the crate she's hanging on, and a quick glance down shows less than a metre between her feet and the top of the next crate beneath her. She lets go before the body somewhere above her can move.

She doesn't stop to get her bearings, just yanks up her bat from ground beneath her where she's apparently – _shit_ – dropped it in the jump and rushes to the edge of the crate, hops down on shaky legs to the next one, and then throws herself off the side and to the gravel and – _fuck_ – that Mirror's Edge game made that whole 'drops hurt less when you end them in forward rolls' thing seem a lot more appealing, but at least she hasn't jarred her knees or anything. Then she's back on her feet and trying to cover the huge distance between herself and the portable across the lot without looking back or falling over, and cursing herself for screwing up so badly when she makes it twenty-four metres and hears two thuds onto the gravel some ways behind her.

She can salvage it, though. She's smart enough for that.

The small portable building – site manager's office, she guesses, has the door open and the lights on, and the lack of any movement through the barred window lets her think there's no one in there. And that's perfect, because if she can barricade herself in there for a second she can shoot her pursuers in the face through the window. Which, really, that's just an absolutely excellent idea.

But for her excellent idea to work she needs to get herself _in_ to that room and close the damned door before she gets leapt on and eaten, and at the moment her knee's getting a little stiff, and _come on_, she thinks – forces her legs to move faster, boots hitting the ground harder, head keeps rushing until everything blurs and she wants to stop and fall and pass out. But then, next she knows, she's beneath neons and slamming the door and clicking the lock and leaning her back against it, and there's not even ten seconds before something thuds into the wood behind her.

She breathes heavily, pants it out while the wood jerks and rattles, and then she lets her gaze flit around until she finds the keys, rings hanging off nails on a board on the wall. Moves to look a little closer and finds the set she's looking for, yanks it off the board and rejoices that she's got her key and that the two bodies outside aren't hungry enough to _actually_ break down the door just yet before she looks around the room again. There's a hand – arm connected, she notes – peeking out at her on the ground from around the heavy desk in the middle of the room, and she swallows thickly, breath still coming out heavy while the door thuds again and the bars on the window start to rattle. Moves around the desk to see everything else connected to that arm, and they're face down but there's a bite on their shoulder and four down their arm, and she doesn't know this person and she doesn't want to. She pulls out her gun, eyes locked on the bloodied, still body on the ground as she lifts the weapon. Remembers that this isn't a game – it's real life, and it's gritty and gross, and she can try and be disconnected for the sake of her teammates but when she's alone she'll feel it just as much as anybody else. Grimaces when she aims and pulls the trigger.

It's not pretty, but the dead don't always stay dead and she's better safe than sorry.

**/-\**

They drop by Sam's house, but the lights are all out, and that's not a good sign.

The door's not locked, either, so when Sam pushes the door open and immediately grasps at the baseball bat just inside she isn't surprised. Or at all disapproving. He calls out for a second and doesn't get a reply. But then there's a scuffle at the top of the stairs and two short figures peer down at them.

"Sammy?" Quinn hears, and it's a boy's voice, so she guesses it's Stevie. Sam's little brother.

"You okay little bro? Stacy?" the taller blonde boy calls back, and the two smaller kids traipse quickly down the stairs to jump on their brother. Cling to his legs happily. "Where's dad?"

"He got weird," the little girl says simply.

"Really weird," agrees the boy. "Got home from work and sat down on the couch for a while, and then he shook a little all weird-like."

"Yeah, like that thing on the Simpsons, in that Japanese episode where they watch the cartoon with all the lights and go funny. Sea-sure. Or something," Stacy explains, clinging tightly to her brother. _Seizure_. Maybe, but Rachel didn't tell them the symptoms. Quinn swallows thickly, meeting her boyfriend's uncertain gaze quickly.

"Is... is he still in the house?" she asks quietly, and the girl blinks up at her.

"Uhm, we played chase with him when he got up. But he was acting weird and angry, and I don't think he knew we were playing. He looked kind of like, uhm, a rabid dog or something. And Stacy got kind of scared. And he didn't say anything when we asked him to stop so we locked him in the basement."

Which is about the time they hear a feral growl from somewhere in the house and the presumably resumed thudding of a body again a wooden door. Sam clenches his jaw and gestures to the stairs.

"Go upstairs, midgets," he tells his siblings affectionately, but Quinn can see the stiffness in the set of his shoulders and the way his muscles tense and his eyes flash. It's hard for him – would be for anyone – apparently his dad's infected. "Quinn, can you help them pack, please? And, uhm... check them?"

She doesn't need elaboration. She knows what he means. Wants her to make sure his brother and sister aren't, well, haven't been bitten. Or cut, or scratched, or left with any kind of way for transmission of the disease, and Quinn just nods and tries not to think about Sam's dad or Rachel out in the construction lot on her own, or the way the world is crashing down outside. And she forces herself not to look when Sam hefts his bat and sets his shoulders behind them and starts towards the basement. Closes the door in the kids' room when the thudding starts downstairs and tells them it's nothing. For some reason, they seem to believe her – the years of sweeping things effortlessly under the rug and acting like everything's fine, she guesses. But whatever it is, the kids ignore the muffled thudding and smile while she helps them pack some stuff, and they're nice, and normal, and if only this was for a vacation instead of an escape. She paints on a smile to keep them happy. Practiced. Perfected.

She's never been so glad for her family's bad habits.

* * *

_But I could only guess that you would think the worst of me  
But I'm of another world where day is night and all the heat  
Is dripping from my skin, dripping from my soul  
And I am hollow in this space like a black hole_

_And oh you know there's something that I can never say_  
_I live in my own darkness with giant birds of prey_  
_And oh you know from up here we watch and burn and reign_  
_We'll swoop down on your faces and satiate___

_**Byrds of Prey, Bertie Blackman**_

* * *

_R&R, and yeah.**  
**_


	5. Keys To The City

_Disclaimer: rinse and repeat. Sorry this took so long - senior year and real world troubles and so on, so forth..._

* * *

**Look What Happened**_**  
**_Keys To The City

* * *

_**The question came, in the wake of the outbreak, "if TVXK was created for the purpose of super soldiers, why weren't the super soldiers sent to battle the outbreak?"**_

_This was a collection of stupid assumptions, made en masse and left unverified by a government that had already failed to protect its citizens._

_People were quick to believe that these super soldiers – Virus Positive Carriers, they were called – were a part of the military already. This was untrue – the few who had been drafted were young, and new, and by majority out of the country at the time. Further, the bulk of successful TVXK implants were much younger than that – ranging from the bare early twenties backwards, hardly trained at all. A lot of them still wasted thirty-plus hours every week caged into bland centres of worthless education, using only their Summers and the sporadic weekend to attend their training sessions. While they may have had senses beyond the norm, they were hardly more equipped to deal with a zombie outbreak than the rest of the population._

_Enough? No. _

_People thought "these people __**volunteered**__ to be soldiers, surely they'll fight the good fight, save the country, save the world". Untrue. TVXK was not a fun thing to be infected by, not even the SS strain present in said recruits. It was a painful process, dangerous in different degrees to the different subjects, and in many cases the Virus Positive Carriers were originally, and consistently, unwilling participants of the programme, who had been bullied, extorted, or deceived into signing away their lives. Some unfortunate souls had even been born into the world for the sake of the programme, science projects from the womb to the laboratory table. Hence, more often than not, VPS Soldiers were hardly sympathetic towards the military, the government, or the United States. _

_In reality, the general public could sit in their homes in fear of infection and moan and gripe about how the SS-soldiers should save them as if it was their sole purpose in life, but the likelihood of their calls being answered wasn't terribly high. Because, really, 'soldiers' was a broad term. These were not members of some kind of advanced tactical rapid response black ops team, as intended and advertised. These were unhappy youths, spread all over the country, who had suffered years of clinical experimentation and abuse at the hands of a programme and a government that had, in more ways than one, forced their participation. And really, if you have been bullied and pushed around and forced into action, cut open and stitched back together, had chemicals pumped into your body by the gallon, spasmed until your muscles seized and your screaming tapered out to raspy breathing, conditioned and drilled in boot camps and training centres until you could recall every last military procedure and then some, withstand any and every physical obstacle thrown your way, despite pain, and blood, and exhaustion, and broken bones, and then been forced to repeat it all from the beginning time and time again – if you have been through all of this, for years, without escape – then really, why the __**fuck**__ would you turn around in the world's time of need and help the assuming masses? _

_You wouldn't. Not without a gigantic, fantastic, important fucking reason._

_And so what did the world learn when the people called for super soldiers to save the day? Assumptions were a bullshit move. _

**/-\**

Quinn watches as the two kids zip up their bags, almost completely in sync, and turn back to her with matching smiles. Smiles at them gently even though she wants to cry a little inside.

The thuds downstairs stopped pretty soon after they started – and that was a little while ago now. And yet, Sam hasn't come upstairs yet. She worries for a moment – what if he's been bitten? What if he's turned? What if he's dead on the ground and his dad's skulking around the house waiting for his next meal?

But she doesn't say anything – tries to push the thought from her mind and helps the kids with their things instead – because thoughts like that don't help anything and she's probably wrong anyway. Has to be wrong, because there's two young blonde kids staring up at her and waiting for her direction when she doesn't have any, and she doesn't know what to do, and she's not sure she could overpower Sam, or Sam's dad, let alone kill either of them, and even if she could Rachel would shoot her for driving her car.

Assuming she _got_ to the car.

But then there's a scuffle outside and the door opens to Sam with a duffle over his shoulder and a denim jacket over his dress shirt and dead eyes. He tries for a smile, but it's empty and it wavers, and then he jerks his head a little and turns to leave and she gets the point. Hushes the two kids and prompts them to follow him – out of the room, down the stairs, out of the house, into the car. They shove their bags in the trunk with Rachel's stuff – Quinn wonders what's in those black duffel bags, what secrets Rachel's been hiding from them all, but then she remembers the blonde boy beside her and the thing he just had to do and ignores any thought of Rachel, because Sam needs her right now.

But he shakes his head when she reaches out a hand for his shoulder, grits his jaw and hands her his bat, and the next thing she knows they're both in the car with an ETA for McKinley and no sound between them. The kids ask questions from the backseat, but she cringes away with non-answers because she doesn't know anything more than they do, and Sam keeps his eyes locked on the road and his jaw clenched and his hands twisted tight around the steering wheel until his knuckles are white with the pressure. She watches him – _vows_ to keep an eye on him – asks him if he needs anything.

He doesn't speak.

**/-\**

Puck pulls up and the house is dark.

Absolutely all lights out. He feels sick – nausea roiling in his gut, bile in the back of his throat, light-headed and gross. Doesn't think he'll actually vomit until he's four steps closer to his front door and falling sidewards off the footpath, his throat burning and his eyes watering and a disgusting taste in his mouth while he sprays it over the grass. Reminds him of some of his not-so-successful party nights, but it's not the same, because he's not drunk, he's _terrified_. What if his mother's dead? What if his sister is in there with murky, glazed yellow eyes and blood at her collar and a break in her skin? What if he has to kill her?

But he picks himself up despite the dizziness and the fear, because on his knees in the middle of his lawn is not the best place to be during the zombie apocalypse. Pushes towards the front door because he needs to _know_.

And before he knows it, he is inside, in the dark hall, listening for sound and hearing none, surrounded by emptiness. The shadows echo the nothingness back at him, and he swallows thickly, reaching for the light switch. And when his small house is lit, and he's walked the length of it twice, checking every room with his bat in hand and coming up short both times, he gets it. He really does.

Because his mother's drawers are empty and his sister has clothes strewn all over her usually spotless floor, and he stops for a moment in front of his own door and the note pinned up on the wood.

"Evacuated by JSJ, couldn't reach you. Stay with Rachel."

And he doesn't know who or what JSJ is, or where his mom or his sister are, but he does know they aren't here, in this house – hopefully, in this town, or this state, or even this country – and that Rachel is the only one in this entire gone-to-shit cow town that can help him find out. So he swallows thickly and flicks out the lights in his mother's room, and packs all of his own shit, chucks it in the truck, and speeds off to McKinley – meets up with a couple of parked cars, even Rachel's, but then there's that sick feeling in his gut again that might be concern, maybe. Possibly. If he admits it.

He's out of his truck, shotgun in hand, and striding over to the collection of wary gleeks standing cautiously around the doors to the school before he really registers it. All of the glee club are there – even Schuester, who looks like he's shit himself, and Miss Pillsbury, both of whom have apparently been called to assemble. Coach Sylvester is standing in the shadows, away from the group, observing with a sneer but not really contributing anything, a rifle held comfortably in her arms. Puck's not sure if that makes him feel relieved or scared. He's not even sure why she's there, really.

He picks Quinn out of the group, two blonde midgets hugging her sides and her worried eyes on a blank-faced Sam. She looks at him, though, and notices his scowl, and shakes her, biting her lip, understanding and pale-faced before he even speaks.

"Where the fuck is Rachel?"

**/-\**

She _nearly_ makes it to the truck. But not quite.

Like all things, it seems pretty fucking simple in theory, but never in practice. Rachel takes up a place at the barred window and slides open the glass, waits until one of the poor sods outside approaches, and then she levels her handgun and lets out a single shot, straight into his forehead. One down, and the other keeps bashing at the door, but then she makes her way over to it and raises her arm and fires three rounds in quick succession, and when the rattling stops and she hears a thud against the ground outside she cracks it open, aims for the fallen head and fires again.

_Then_ she goes for the truck. Gets to it, unlocks the door, and steps up to reach the cabin. And typically enough, that's when it all goes wrong, and there's the heavy trampling of feet from the other side of the lot, and she doesn't think about it – just slams the door behind her, hits the lock, and stuffs the key into the ignition. Her hands shake when she turns the engine over, but it doesn't roar to life until one of the zombies has already leapt up onto the driver's side of the cab, thudding it's fist against the window and howling up a storm on the other side of the glass.

She jams her foot on the accelerator before she can really think too much about it, and the truck tears away through the dusty lot, underneath white lights. She doesn't think to flick the headlights on until she's out of the lot and onto the darker Lima streets, the howling zombie still clinging dutifully to her door and rattling away at the handle whenever she isn't swerving dangerously around a corner or a stray car on the road.

Rachel scowls, trying not to veer onto the sidewalk even as she grabs her Colt from where she's chucked it on the passenger's seat and purses her lips, one hand on the steering wheel, even as she raises her arm across her body to press the barrel against the glass. Tries to lean as far away from the weapon as she can while maintaining some kind of handle on the direction she drives in and grits her teeth when she pulls the trigger. She doesn't turn to see if her shot is successful – the rattling of the door stops, and she almost feels the crunch of human bones beneath the tyres when the back of the truck jolts over the dropped body, and that's enough of a confirmation for her while her ears ring from the gunshot. Instead, she drops her pistol into her denim-clad lap and spins the steering wheel to cut another corner. Soon enough she's coming up on the home stretch.

She floors it when she catches sight of the school and the large group at the front door, huddled together in the winter air. Naturally, with such a group standing at a doorway out in the cold, she thinks the worst. Until she gets close enough to make out individual figures, anyway. From behind the wheel and the windscreen Rachel can see all of the Gleeks doing exactly what they do best – screaming at each other and shit all else. Considers ramming them beneath the front of the truck, but thinks better of it as she swerves widely into the parking lot. Roars up to the building, and slams on the brake, skidding to a halt some metres away from the group at the front door, silencing the lot of them with the rapid approach of her behemoth of a vehicle and the screeching of the brakes.

She grabs up her pistol again before pushing the door open with a jerking motion that successfully removes the majority of the glass in the window, cracked and jagged from her gun minutes beforehand. Then she hops easily out of the cab, Colt in hand, and stalks her way towards the amassed Gleeks with a glare on her face and the bitter taste of blood in her mouth – a split lip from her fun back in the construction lot to accompany the other aches she'll have in the morning, just her luck.

Puck calls out to her before she can ask why they're standing around outside, in open space.

"There's a lock on the door."

It doesn't stop her from scowling, not even with the obviously relieved expression on his face when he sees her, and especially not with the follow-up concern when he noticed the bloody lip, the scratched hands, the dusty clothes, the faint limp in her step. Instead, her finger twitches on the trigger of her gun, and she traipses through the silent gleek crowd, watches them part before her like the Red Sea for the first time in living memory. Thinks, idly, that she must be looking positively _murderous_ for that to happen.

She's almost to the door when she hears it – Santana, of course, because really, who else would ever pick right then to say something.

"Better have a good fucking reason for calling us here, Streisand!"

Rachel doesn't even bother responding, but that's what starts the rest of them up, because whenever it comes to Rachel Berry one single doubt, one single demeaning statement, is never enough, and even a temporary peace is too much to ask for.

"Yeah, what the hell, Rachel! I could be driving out of state with my parents right now, if they'd been home, but instead I got taken here because your white ass _ordered_ it."

She doesn't turn around, just keeps walking towards the school doors with a stiff stride and a locked jaw, her trigger finger just itching to pull. She grits her teeth and bares it.

"Oh tell us, all-knowing one, what the fuck you wanted us here for, 'cause my family's out there right now!"

"Do you even know what's going on right now!"

"She's probably just being a selfish bitch – her dads are out of town, probably knows that she'll get killed by a zombie, all alone, and decided to take us down with her."

"As your teacher, Rachel, I'm demanding that you explain yourself right now! You can't just demand attendance in a time of national crisis!"

"Why should we listen to her anyway, it's not like she has any idea what to do right now any-"

There is a single gunshot, cutting off all conversation between the few loud souls who bothered to open their mouths at all. Then, complete silence, all eyes on the short girl by the door while she pulls the chain from the door handles, the lock shot through, and chucks it to the ground. She turns around slowly, her gaze cool, calculating, but with an undertone of fury chilling enough to maintain the hush of all assembled.

"Let me clear this up for you, before you waste your breath on trivial things that I don't care about," she says icily. "I'm not white, Mercedes, I'm from a mixed ethnicity family of Jews and Nigros so stop playing the fucking race card – it's not a good enough fucking excuse any of the other times you've used it and it sure as hell isn't now. Yes, you could be driving out of state, but you would be caught up in mass traffic, backed up at quarantine, and swarmed by a zombie hoarde in less time than you could hold a high note. Lauren, if you don't know where your family is, then I'd say they're either dead already or they got out of state on a ViPo evacuation earlier this evening. Hope for the latter, but get the fuck over it."

She glowers at the two girls, who are too shaken to glare back, and then turns her icy stare on Finn.

"If I were the selfish bitch you say I am, Finn Hudson, I'd have abandoned you on the highway three hours ago, instead of letting you in the truck bed. In fact, if I was a fucking selfish person, I would have run you over with the pickup and made sure that your over-inflated head was properly crushed beneath the front tyres. So shut the fuck up, because my dads are no fucking business of yours, and if I was _selfish_ I would have left you all here on your own and been out of the state _yesterday_." The lack of comprehension makes the statement totally worth it. She knows they don't understand. She doesn't look forward to the time that they do. She turns her glare to her failure of a teacher and stares at him with enough intensity to make him shake at the knees. "Right now, Mister Schuester, you're not my teacher – you are a scared, _little_ man trying not to _soil his panties_ in the school parking lot, and you are in no position to make demands. So shut your mouth before I take my pretty, custom M1911 here," she tells him quickly, lifting the gun still in her hand and giving it a shake for emphasis, "and blow your fucking brains out. _Comprende_?"

She waits pointedly for a nod from the visibly chastened man before continuing again.

"Fantastic!" it's heavy laden with sarcasm, and the group before her flinches. "And now to you, Santana. I asked you to come here because, so far as your chances of survival go? This is probably the best bet. And – I'm not going to sugar coat it for you here – it's not even a high one. Now, I'm going to turn around, and open the doors, and then I'm going to unload all the construction materials from the back of my truck, and I am going to start boarding up as many windows in this school as I can before the infected portion of bumfuck Lima, Ohio, comes calling. I am going to wait here, and hold out, until the right opportunity for escape actually presents itself to me. Whether or not you want to stay here? I don't really fucking care. But if you're not with me, you're against me, and you can get off school grounds, drive as far as your car can take you, and do what you please. You want to stay, you keep your bitching to yourself, and you do what I say, because you all might think you're king shit in comparison to little old me, but I absolutely _promise_ you – every _one_ of you – that _no one_ in the world knows as much about what the fuck is going on than I do."

There's silence for a good long moment before Artie pipes himself up, hesitant and glowering out from the backseat of Kurt's truck.

"So, what, we're supposed to follow you because you say so? Just trust that you'll do the right thing."

Rachel just scoffs and rolls her eyes.

"I'm not asking you to _trust_ me, for god's sake. I'm not even asking you to _agree_ with me. But I am _telling_ you that you'll do what I say if you want to live."

There isn't even time to blink before Sue Sylvester emerges from her spot in the shadows, strolls to the truck, and starts unloading. Puck follows her, just as wordlessly, Sam on his heels. Kurt and Blaine exchange a silent glance before turning to follow and assist. Those with their pride wounded – Lauren, Mercedes, Mister Schue, and Finn, most obviously – sulk for a long moment. But eventually they're spurred into motion, moving towards the cars to grabs some of the things that the others have packed. When they've all turned away and started co-ordinating, Rachel allows herself the tiniest sigh of relief, but doesn't relax the rest of herself for even a fraction of a second.

In fact, she tenses further when a hand lands down on her shoulder, turning to find herself face to face with Quinn Fabray, two short blonde things clinging to the girl's jacket with wide eyes, fearful and confused. Quinn herself just stands there, eyes roaming critically over Rachel's face, a frown on her own lips before she lifts a hand and wipes idly at the brunette's bloody lip. She doesn't speak about her concern, but it's just as obvious to Rachel as the unspoken question behind those hazel eyes – _why do you know what to do?_ – that wasn't answered at the Fabray household and isn't being answered now. Rachel just shakes her head – _not yet_ – her reply in their silent exchange, and turns to push the school doors open, unholstering her second pistol to safely lead her pseudo troops into their new base of operations.

**/-\**

Puck knocks another nail into the wall, pinning the board up over the window, even as Kurt whacks some concrete onto the next window sill over and stacking on bricks. They're working in small groups, per Rachel's orders – Blaine and Kurt are with him, boarding up the front rooms in the dark. The of the school is suffering at the hands of Finn, with Mike knocking his skills back in line, fixing his mistakes, Sam with them but probably doing a well enough job on his own. Santana and Lauren are wherever Rachel sent them, and Tina and Mercedes were left to patrol the halls, just in case Rachel's original excursion missed a zombie, or one of them snuck in past Sue Sylvester's rooftop sentry watch.

Miss Pillsbury was sent off to account for all the stock in the cafeteria, and then the meds in the nurse's office, with Schuester as her personal whiney bodyguard. Quinn and Brittany were left to look after the siblings Evans and set up some kind of living space in the choir room, or the auditorium – wherever they decided.

And Rachel, well – Puck watches out the window like a hawk, every time she emerges out under the wash of the streetlights, ferrying bags from their assembled car fleet to somewhere inside. She has more trouble every time she makes the trip – he can see it. She sets her shoulders a little more, moves a little slower, limps a little more with every step. One of her knees quivers, and she coaxes it back in line, forces it to keep her upright, strong, moving.

This time – he's lost count of the number of times the brunette's gone back and forth now – he watches her make the line to her own car, popping the boot, already emptied of the properties of Quinn and the three Evans'. Puck watches as Rachel reaches in for her own black duffel bags – there's two, and he doesn't know what's in them, but she yanks them out of the car and on to the ground in a flash, slams the trunk shut only to stumble and fall back against the car, wincing, hands clenching into fists. Puck drops his hammer without a second thought and makes a rush for the door of the classroom, through the hall and then outside, to the car, to Rachel, while she supports herself against the car and tries to shift her shaky left leg.

"You alright, my Jewish princess? Want some help?" he asks as he comes upon her, reaching for her bags. He sees her flinch forward the slightest amount – she wants to stop him, to take them herself, he knows it, he can see it in her. She doesn't want to be weak. But he hoists both bags up – he's tired, and they're heavy, but he can do it. He will. Touches her gently on the shoulder when one of his hands is free and whispers to her softly. "Don't push it too hard, babe."

He watches as her lips purse and she shakes her head, pushing her weight back onto her bad leg and trying to get herself back up and off the car. Puck frowns to himself even as he falls in step beside her, back towards the building – knows he'll have to force her to the girl's locker rooms, to wash up a little and get her head back in the game. He wishes he could put her to bed, make her sleep, let her rest, but he knows better. They have a bunch of windows to board up, a stack of furniture to push in front of the school doors. And after that she needs to snap a box on everyone's fingers to make sure they're not infected, time bombs ticking on down. They have a long night ahead of them, and no one gets to sleep tonight.

"It's beating me tonight, Puck. It shouldn't, but it is, and we're not even in it yet," she says quietly – so much so that he hardly hears it. But he knows it's only meant for him. "You don't get it though – this is _my_ thing, _my_ city, now. I'm meant to _own_ this shit."

He doesn't get it, and he's caught between wanting her to explain and wanting her to shove it away in the dark corners it belongs in, never bring it up again. He needs to know but he doesn't want to, or he wants to but he doesn't need to, or maybe he's just scared. He thinks, when she speaks, underneath the determination there is fear, there is hopelessness, there is everything in her that there is in him, and she just masks it better. They hide it behind false bravado, behind instinct and desperation, but they're both afraid. Everything's going to shit, who wouldn't be?

"I _need_ to be in control."

* * *

_Give me the keys to the city  
__Give me the keys to your soul, yeah  
__Give me the keys to the moment when  
__the whole city loses control_

**_Keys To The City, Skybombers_**

* * *

_R&R is appreciated. To those wanting of new updates, if I haven't given one in a while, please note that my progress remains listed on my profile for all to see. Thanks._


	6. Heavy In Your Arms

_Disclaimer: No._

_I like to take my time obviously._

* * *

**Look What Happened  
**Heavy In Your Arms

* * *

_**The hardest part of surviving the zombie apocalypse, contrary to what the movies tell you, is not the threat of the actual zombies.**_

_This is probably why Hollywood is a better indicator of what __**not **__to do during the apocalypse than a glaringly evident 'pros' list. Surely detailed in just about every zombie film in existence is the difficulty of facing a zombie horde, of avoiding infection and escaping death. They might sometimes brainstorm the resulting events of low ammunition, or food shortage, or fear, or loneliness that leads, ultimately, to insanity. Sometimes, hypothetical mentions of government conspiracy are thrown around, with a virus being released as a test, only to be cleaned up later by some kind of advanced tactical squad (in the case of TVXK, I do not in any way hazard to inform that responsibility is entirely on the government for it's release - however, it was an oversight rather than an intention, and there was no thought at any point to send in a tactical squad)._

_But, no, the hardest part of surviving the zombie apocalypse is not the attack of the horde - though it is rather intimidating, yes - nor starvation, exhaustion, lack of ammunition. It's not the overwhelming loneliness, or the fear, or the loss of everything you, as an individual, are familiar with - everything you know, and love. It's not the impending threat of insanity on the broken soul. It is not a follow-up military tactical squad wiping out survivors. It is none of these things._

_The hardest part of the zombie apocalypse, by far, is the guilt._

_That one single moment when you level your gun at one of those poor, hungry souls and proceed to pull the trigger, or where you swing back with your bat to shatter bone and spray blood. That is the moment you will remember - because that person, though hidden behind gore and misty eyes, was still, once upon a time, a human being, with a job, and a conscience, and a family. Maybe they were even your family, or your friend, or maybe just someone you knew in passing. They may be, in a sense, dead - overtaken by infection, that leads to sheer, unstoppable hunger - but they were human once. Just like you - like your mother, father, brother, sister, daughter, son. And they may no longer be human, but they're still breathing, and that's still a spark of life of some sense, doused beneath your blow. You may be defending your own life, but you are still taking someone else's - in a second, in a moment, in a thought. It doesn't take long, but you crush your bat down against human skin, and fracture human bone, or crush human flesh into a grizzly mess with heavy bullets at high force. And you watch a life, extinguished, all in the name of self-preservation._

_That moment - however small, however fleeting - __**that **__is the moment that will stay with you, that will ghost its way into your head when you stir from your slumber, and haunt the back of your eyelids whenever you blink. It will eat at you in the quiet moments, in the dark, and the loneliness. And ever so slowly, it will crawl beneath your skin when no one's looking, and drive you slowly to the brink of sanity. And that is, by far, the hardest part of surviving the zombie apocalypse – because it will take you, and taunt you, and test you until the end._

_And really, who wants to live with that?_

**/-\**

Rachel keeps thunking the hammer down on nails in the dark room. It's relaxing, actually – the rise and fall of the hammer setting out a steady beat again metal and wood. She's been working her way through the rhythms of the RENT soundtrack for the rest of the room, and she's on to the last window now.

Alone in there. Likes it better this way.

She'd allowed Puck to allay his concerns – push her down into a chair, check over her knee with an athlete's knowledge while Quinn hovered in the background with a frown and silently concerned eyes. Allowed them, further, to coax her into the Cheerios' locker room where Puck left her to clean up and Quinn pretended not to look while she did. And then, when she'd received the all clear from her unlikely caretakers, she'd slipped away through the dark school corridors with her handguns holstered comfortably beneath her dark jacket, grabbing up a hammer and pushing her own cause at as rapid a pace as she could manage.

She could breathe easier, sunken into the shadows as she was, away from the rest of the club and their curious eyes, away from the resentment and the reluctant following and the overall grudging attitude of "if we _have_ to", because they don't fucking _have_ to and if they want to go it alone then she's all for kicking them to the fucking curb and she doesn't want to hear their shit tonight. Really, she'd rather just bleed away into the shadows, hammering nails into the window sills at regular tempos to beats that remind her of another time in another place with other people.

She tries to forget them for a little while, in the dark. Tries to convince herself, just for a bit, that they aren't there, aren't her concern, and aren't her responsibility. Puck, who is caring and concerned, even though he knows, somewhere beneath his smile, that there is a _reason_ Rachel knows what's going on and it's not a good one – knows and still swears to follow her to their graves and their salvation – whichever comes first. Quinn, who is curious but doesn't want to be – Rachel can see it, the war of needing to know and wanting to never find out, as it plays out behind hazel eyes – she who rightly dreads to open Pandora's box for fear of its contents. Finn, with his mouth as clumsy as his feet, and his hulking, suffocating presence, Mercedes and her attitude, Blaine's casual acceptance, the Evans siblings and their tragedy, Sam and his guilt.

His overriding, terrifying guilt, that mirrors and furthers her own, because she has killed people tonight too, but no one as important to her as a father is meant to be. Hers are stranded in Columbus for a night, and a small part of her, ever-pessimistic, hopes they die there, only so they can't nearer to her. This is the same part that fears, in the event of facing her daddy infected, being unable to pull the trigger, and hopes, in the event of facing her dad, to pull it all too quickly. She imagines them dead in the streets of a city two hours away so that she doesn't have to see them dead in the streets of Lima, and somewhere in her fractured skull it makes enough sense to override the guilt of imagining them dead at all.

She lifts another board from the ground, pushes it up against the window sill with as strong of an arm as she can muster while her fathers are holed up in a shitty apartment in Columbus and her former classmates work and gossip within school walls, somewhere away from her. Rachel weathers on through the darkness, alone, to the dawn.

She hammers in another nail.

**/-\**

Puck enters the room with a scowl, taking in its occupants with a sceptical mind in the early morning – the gleeks who have finished their boarding, used up their concrete and bricks, deemed themselves secure within the school, are scattered around the choir room, huddled and strewn out, tired, wiped, Schuester is grumbling something beneath his breath in the corner, Mercedes hissing out some kind of bitchy drivel to whoever is closest, Tina in silent tears. Finn, in all his stupid glory, is splayed out on the risers, sleeping soundly in the midst of everyone else's distress, while Quinn sits with the younger Evans siblings, hushing them with gentle tones and trying to get them to sleep, just for a little while. Sam and Mike practically follow him into the room, apparently having finished up with their section at a similar time.

Kurt and Blaine are still absent, somewhere out in the school building finishing up with the windows, or reinforcing the doors. Sue is still on the roof – very occasionally, he hears the brief sound of a gunshot, reassuring him that the cheerleading coach is still alive, kicking, and sniping off the odd zombie roamer. He doesn't know where Rachel is.

He makes his way over to Quinn, earning a sleepy wave from Brittany, slumped on the floor besides her and the two children, back up against the wall, eyes sliding heavily closed. He taps her lightly on the forehead and mutters out a "you should sleep, Britt," in a tone more evidently tired than he expects. She just smiles and shakes her head, and he frowns a little more before turning his attention to the other tired blonde teenager, who stares up at him with all the reservation she has left and gestures to the empty spot on Stevie's right. He's too tired to object, and he takes it, his heavy body practically dropping to the floor, lead weight under human skin. As soon as he's off his feet, he feels it dragging him down, to the ground and into it, under it. Feels like he's been hit by a truck. Wants to be swallowed up by the earth beneath him.

He knows he's not the only one battling exhaustion – looking around the room, he sees it in all of them. They're all wiped – they've been pushed to the brink of collapse, flattened under the pressure. But he also knows that he's done more work than most – Finn gave up hours ago, far before midnight – the first to fall, leaving the work for everyone else. But with the golden boy shirking the work, it practically screamed an all clear for the rest of them – Mercedes, the bitchy little diva, turned tail after him claiming exhaustion and leaving the rest to pick up the slack. Schuester and Artie hardly helped in the first place – instead spent the evening sitting in the cafeteria while Emma Pillsbury went through the food stores and started writing up lists and rations, planning things out. Tina withstood until two in the morning, doing the heavy, hard work until she couldn't lift another hammer, and only then did she make her retreat. Santana was up on the roof with Sue, being taught the finer points of handling firearms in order to get ahead of the pack, in typical Santana fashion.

So, Puck knows who, amidst the assembled, has done their work and earned their rest, and every time his eyes focus on Finn Hudson's sleeping form he feels a spark beneath his skin, between his bones, threatening to ignite, to force adrenaline back into his veins and spur him into motion. He wants to plant his fist in the little fucker's face and knock his teeth out for being such a lazy, assuming bastard. He looks at Mercedes and wants to take an axe to her hairdo – wants to humiliate her because he would never hurt her. He wants to make her miserable, make her cry and regret her stupid words and her shitty attitude, because she's lazy and she's only been horrible all night – especially with Rachel. He looks at Schuester and wants to smack the prick's skull into the fucking wall until the actual idea of teamwork and family and common human fucking decency gets through it.

Puck is angry – further, furious, to a degree he has never before known, heightened by the stress of the situation, by the lack of knowledge so far as his family goes, by the confusion and the grief. But, more than that, Puck is exhausted, and it's probably a good thing, because the tiredness overtaking his limbs keeps the flames beneath his skin down to a simmer – muffles them until the anger is little more than a light resentful glare. He stays, caught between an aching tiredness and a desire to yell and shout, kick and punch, and hurt. Kurt and Blaine wander in, later, and announce quietly enough that they've finished their work, that they've done a patrol of the school _just to make sure_ – a part of Puck curses and scoffs and spits because _he_ didn't do that, didn't even _think_ of it, and he should have – and Puck watches as Kurt sneers at his sleeping step-brother and leads his boyfriend into a corner of the room, where they huddle together and close their eyes, sharing warmth and tempting sleep.

Then, time passes in silence, mostly, as everyone trades the occasional glance across the room and Quinn hushes the tired children and Miss Pillsbury scribbles on and on across a stack of paper on a table to one side of the room. Puck doesn't know how long he sits there, listening to the occasional whimper of the little boy beside him, watching as Quinn and Sam comfort the midgets, Brittany's head tipped to rest on his shoulder since he-doesn't-know-when. But for that time, the room is mostly quiet, maintaining a tense peace between the tired teens.

It is dawn before Rachel returns, and they descend like vultures.

They flock to their feet, squawking loudly, outrageously, unhappily, and Puck can only watch – can only sit idly as the short Jewish girl gets three steps through the door before being accosted by a mess of stupid and angry and words, and it just gives him a fucking headache, because he's been up all night doing hard labour and he's just so _fucking_ tired. And Rachel is too – he knows it. She was, hours ago, in the early evening when she drove a huge truck at screaming speeds into the school parking lot with a shattered passenger-side window and a split lip, face bloodied and hands grazed, knee sprained to discomfort. She was wiped when she dragged the bags from the cars, practically wasted when he and Quinn shoved her into the Cheerios locker room to wash away the blood. Now, hours later, she is nearly dead on her feet – dark circles around dark eyes, tired lips still jerking into a scowl. He knows she wants to drop, to sleep, and nothing more than that, but he watches as she sets her shoulders back up, gathers up her stoicism and faces the dumb fucks as they claw away at her in the doorway.

"Will you tell us what's going _on_ now?" Schuester, like he has a right to know before anyone else and she's just a fucking inconvenience.

"Where have _you_ been?" Mercedes, like Rachel's the scum on the bottom of her shoe, needs to be ordered and pushed and kicked around, like it's okay to fucking step all over her.

"I bet you haven't even been doing any of the _work_." Artie, like he's the patron saint of putting in the hard yards, having sat around in his chair doing shit all for the last twelve hours, right. Like he knows shit about hard work, and what Rachel's gone through, and what Rachel _is_.

But that's not Puck's concern – what she is. He doesn't know. He doesn't want to.

They harp on at her, though, and then they're shoving at her, and then she's shoving back with a hiss and flashing eyes, until there's a pile of bodies tangled on the floor, Rachel standing at the foot of it with a scowl and stiff shoulders, and Artie is rolling back, unbridled, across the room with stunned eyes and no ability to break before he hits the wall.

"I don't care if you want answers," Rachel says simply, steel-toned. "I don't give a flying fuck. No sir. But you know what I care about? I care about sleep. I care about fucking sleeping, and if you try to stop me from sleeping for even a second longer than I deem absolutely necessary I will blow your freaking brains out – _all_ of you, mark my words."

She stares straight at Mercedes as she says it, and waits until the girl whimpers and nods an acceptance, cowed and practically shitting herself right there on the floor. Puck pulls himself up from the ground, finally finding the will to move, and stumbles his way over to Rachel, even as she starts to sway in place. Leads her over to the piano bench as her gaze and her steps falter, and she presses a hand to her forehead and grumbles. And then he kneels before her and puts his head in her lap, hardly able to stand, while she rubs her fingers into her temple and practically shudders in her fatigue. He wants to sleep, so badly. And more than that, he wants _her_ to sleep, to rest, to work it all out so that she can get up in a few hours and get it together and plan their escape. More than that, his hazy mind comprehends while he rests his heavy head on her tired legs and she heaves in an unnaturally shaky breath – the last minute anger drives her over her worst point of exhaustion, leaves her lungs empty – he wants her to heal, so she doesn't run herself into the ground, dig her own grave, so to speak, and leave him alone.

They sit like this for a little while – seconds, minutes, he doesn't know, his eyes are closed, but he's not sleeping because he knows the night isn't over yet – until she gets her bearings back and drops her fingertips from her forehead and frowns down at him, hollow.

"They need to be tested. I should have done it hours ago."

He understands the need, and the process, but he can't find the strength to move from his spot and find the lockbox, where they stashed it, over near Quinn, amidst a bunch of bags. Rachel runs her fingers through his hair, seemingly unable to do the same, and their hesitation leads them nowhere at all.

This is when Sam comes through.

"Whatever it is you do to test will have to wait a few hours, at least, Rach. You need to sleep more'n anything," he says, and it's the most he's spoken in hours, since whatever happened at his house with Quinn. "I can take watch."

The offer is more than appealing. Puck wants Rachel to go for it, and Rachel seems tempted, but she has her doubts – Puck can see it. The purse of her lips and the narrowed eyes in Sam's direction.

"Are you sure you can last?" she asks quietly, and his nod of affirmation is all she seems to need to sway her. "My lockbox," is all the direction she gives, and Sam finds it amidst the bags and drags it over to her feet. Even wiped, she opens it and closes it before anyone can really see what's inside, but Puck watches when she pulls out her testing box again, yanks on Sam's hand, and snaps it around his finger. To Sam's credit, he hardly flinches. There is a moment's wait before the lights come up green, and Puck can see the relief through the slacking of Rachel's shoulders, her slow blinking, and then she replaces the tester's pad and puts it back in her box. "You're clean. You know the drill?"

"Someone seizures, I shoot them?"

Rachel doesn't give him an affirmative, just hands him one of her pistols with stiff fingers, and it's all the agreement he needs. It's almost as though the gun holds her life force, because as soon as it passes from her grasp her eyelids are drifting shut and her breathing deepening. And, heavy, Puck gets to his feet and pulls her barely wakeful body from the piano stool and back to his spot by Brittany and Quinn. He doesn't pay much attention when Sam goes over to kick at a sleeping Finn, threaten him into consciousness and guilt the lazy son of a bitch into watch duty. Instead, he focuses on Rachel – on pulling her down to him, down to the hard floor and against him, to share heat and some kind of comfort, to rest, to heal. Then, in his last moment of wakefulness, hazel eyes and soft hands – he's not the only one.

**/-\**

Rachel wakes in darkness, encased in warmth, a low hum and distant screams pushing at her ears.

It is not night. Somehow she knows this, despite the darkness. She battles the disorientation, still tired, and knows it is barely afternoon – there is a watch on the pale wrist of the arm around her waist that tells her so. It is barely afternoon and she has had barely five hours sleep. It is, for her, for now, enough. This is the zombie apocalypse, and she is Rachel Berry, and if she wants to make headlines, if she wants to be a star in the current climate, then she has no time for sleep. She has no time to waste on trivial things like closing her eyes to the world when she should be examining every path out of it.

It is with stiff fingers that she lifts the arm from her waist and pushes it gently back to the warm, feminine form of Quinn, pressed tightly to her back. She slides Puck's heavy arm from her shoulders, back to the hard planes of his body, and then she slips away – out of their warmth, of the sprawl of their bodies, and away from their comfort, so soft and warm and _human_. Decent, and normal.

Her feet lead her out of the choir room, and Tina watches her from the corner, one of Rachel's pistols in her hands and Sam sleeping close beside her, obviously having turned the watch over. They don't speak when she passes, and then she is in the cold halls, uninhabited and dark. It seeps through skin, through flesh, to her bones, and chills her to clarity. More than twelve hours have passed. There is no need to test the blood of anyone within proximity – the eight hour quarantine that would normally be required, in lieu of a blood test, has been and gone, had done so before she even went to sleep, though her tired, panicked mind had not, at the time, understood this. Those inside McKinley's walls are thus uninfected.

Hypothetically – and she thinks it, as her feet lead her towards the stairs, further towards the roof, and the humming that woke her continues to buzz in her ears – she should have tested everyone immediately upon arrival at the school. Protocol and common sense would dictate it. And yet – and yet – in her foolishness, in her tired, frazzled, stupid mind, the thought escaped her. It took a backseat to securing the building, and it never should have. It should have been the first thing she thought of, and the first thing she did, and she hates herself for not doing it, because, yes, they were lucky – quarantine's over, nobody's infected. But what if they hadn't been lucky? What if someone had been bitten? What if, during the night, because of her thoughtlessness, someone had turned, and bitten someone else, and ravaged them all?

Her mistakes – and she knows it, recites it in her head as she emerges onto the rooftop, sighting a stationary Sue Sylvester slumped in a chair by the building's edge, probably power-napping, but never _sleeping _– are unforgiveable. Others can screw up as much as they want, in any way they wish, without a care in the world. And it won't matter. But Rachel, who crosses her arms and approaches the edge, staring out over a dark town, under a dark sky, can _not_ fuck up. Can not mess around. Can not, ever, make a mistake, because _her_ mistakes – hers are the kind that lose lives. They are in a _shitstorm_ right now, and everything is riding on her. And in these moments – these hours, and the days that will come – she does not have the right, nor the inclination, to be responsible for the loss of life of any of her one-way friends. Not now, not ever again.

She stands, rubbing at her arms, in the cold air – it is fitting, she thinks, in the middle of winter, for the snow that should have been on the streets to turns to sludge under pounding rain and stormclouds, to chill the air until breathing sends ice crystals, cold and spiking to the lungs. The ground is wet – the concrete beneath Rachel's feet, the streets, two floors down. A cold, dreary city that sees no daylight, where there has been rain though there is none now.

And on the wind, carried to her from streets and alleys, through broken windows and shattered doors, over empty houses and abandoned cars, she hears the screams. They are faint, even to her ears, but she hears them still – the cacophony, structured symphony, out of the distance, out of the gloom. And still, the ever-accompanying hum, many tones, many pitches, twisted and sunken together to create a single drone, calling to her through the air.

It sends shudders to her spine.

"Are your flailing, screeching autobots still human?"

She doesn't turn to look at Sue Sylvester, who calls at her across the small distance between them. She doesn't turn because she doesn't want to see the disapproval, and the scowl. It's always there – she's seen it before. She doesn't want it now.

"None of them seized up in the night, hm? Took a munch on your buddies?" the tone is sarcastic, a cackle beneath words, pointing out her mistakes. Sue Sylvester will always be pointing out her failures. That's really what she's there for.

"You and I both know that I messed up," Rachel replies simply, trying, ever-still, to bite her tongue, to stop the worst of words from spilling out. They will get her nowhere. They never have. "I have seen my mistake. I am thankful that we passed quarantine. But it is not a mistake I will make again."

"Too right, Streisand," Sue growls out at her. "Because if you make another mistake as overwhelmingly stupid as that, leaving us to any such possible risk, it will render you incapable and obsolete. And you know what we do with the failures, hmm? What your dad does with them, midget?"

Rachel just lowers her head, resilient submission, because she knows. Lord does she.

She takes another moment to stare out over the droning town, sighing out her exhaustion and her misgivings, letting them drift towards the heavens, where they will mingle with the clouds and pound back down upon her when the rain comes again. For now, she will have respite – dedication, movement, and doubtlessness. She will order the troops and stock the supplies, and prepare to wait it out.

She turns her back, walks back inside, re-sets her shoulders. From the town, the droning continues.

**/-\**

She wakes them all up with the sound of her lockbox crashing against the piano top. Tina has already stood, moved beside her and handed Rachel's pistol back to it's proper owner. She watches as Rachel fiddles with the lock and the rest of the assembled lurch back into consciousness, waking from their bad dreams and into a proper nightmare. The short brunette ignores the rest of them while they grumble and get to their feet – ignores the frowns, the ghosts of concern that Puck and Quinn show when they realise she is the one waking them, and she is not between them any longer.

Focussed entirely on her task, Rachel pulls out a radio unit, shoves it solidly onto the flat wooden surface of the piano and starts tuning it to the right channel. The rest of them watch groggily while she picks up the handpiece, pushes in the button and rushes out her speech.

"This is G-Star to VP-base, come in base." There is a short pause where she waits for reply and earns only a slightly static silence from the device. "G-Star to VP-base, awaiting direction and requesting evac." Another few moments in tense silence, with a dozen onlookers to a stone-faced teenage girl. "Any other motion in Ohio requiring report. Report base. Report _anyone_."

There is the now-repeated click of her handset, but then she scowls and leaves the whole thing alone on the piano, pushing past her audience to the bags of weapons where they've been left off to the side of the room. Tired eyes watch, uncomprehending, while she rifles around and pulls out an automatic shotgun, mutters a 'shiny' to herself, and goes about loading it up.

"If you guys have any shopping preferences, I recommend you write me a list now. There will be no take-backs, no refunds, and no late orders. If you need clothing, if you need medication, if you need _sanitary products_, you will tell me _now_."

There is a chorus of blinks and gaping mouths and then Puckasks a simple "what are you talking about?" and she enlightens them.

"We have shelter," she says to him. "We have company. Hell, we even have food and a working cool-room. But the power is going to go out eventually, you know, with no one running the plant. Heating will go out. We can wire the back-up generator to power the cafeteria facilities so that we can keep eating, but we'll need heat, which we won't have. We'll need light, which we won't have. We'll need the stupid little comforts that get you through the day. We _need_ supplies. And more than that, we need fucking ammunition, because there is no way in hell that every one of us is going to get out of here alive if we just run for the hills. We don't know where is safe – from infection rates, so far as I know, TVXK may very well have overrun more than half of the American states already, possibly more. You can go outside, of course – pick a direction and drive as far as you can go. But you don't know, maybe it'll always be a step ahead of you. Maybe you'll never make it to safety, because there won't be any."

They all stare at her with hopeless eyes, and a few of them look a little angry, a lot frustrated. They wonder why she _knows_ this, why she can theorise, why she's _aware_. They want to be _knowledgeable_. She _wishes_ she wasn't.

"I make no guarantees of safety here. It's a stupid promise, and I'm not that dumb," she tells them all. "But at the moment, the best option, to me, is to stay here, bunker down, and wait it out. Eventually, contact _will_ come. I believe that with everything that I have. And when we know what is actually, entirely going on outside of these walls, then we will know how to get out of this waste of a fucking town. The downside is this – I don't know _when_ that contact will come. It could be today, it could be three weeks from now, it could even be longer. But I _will_ wait it out. And to do so, I will need to get my massive intensive raid on down at the local stores. I'd like to do this while some of the infected are killing other people rather than me, and there's no time like the present."

It makes sense, in a thoughtless way. She feels kind of like she's pedalling off to her death, making the dumb decisions and pushing forward when she should be feeling pause. Think things through. Take the safe option. But then, there aren't really safe options at the moment, there's just necessary ones.

But then Puck moves forward, up beside her, and yanks up a gun for himself, and Sam follows suit, evidently determined. There's a moments hesitation where Mike speaks quietly with a frowning Tina, and then he moves forward too. Quinn takes a half-step forward, worrying her lip, but then Rachel looks at her – hard eyes and a frown, and shakes her head the barest amount. Sees the resignation to it, the fury about it, but doesn't comment, and neither does Quinn when she crosses her arms and looks away with a miserable scowl.

"Well, it appears we have our crew. The rest of you better get to listing your demands. While we're gone, Coach Sylvester is all too ready to do as her name suggests and coach you into using actual weaponry with actual effective force. So take up on that offer, or go get some more construction gear and fortify up. Do something _useful_," Rachel directs stonily, and levels a heavy glare straight at Finn. "Because if you don't, if you make excuses, if you sleep and slack off while the rest of us pull the hard yard, then you are wasting my time, my space, and my resources, and I will not hesitate to remedy that fact."

They are cold words to part with, but memorable, and she watches select member of their club flinch and cringe and knows that they will grumble and scowl and bitch and moan later. She doesn't really care.

Later, once they figure out what everyone wants and where they need to go for it, Rachel leads them out to the cars. Puck is going to take his pick-up, and Mike and Sam will be taking Kurt's car while Rachel leads in her car. Puck goes straight for his car while Mike and Tina hug out their cautious goodbye and Quinn talks quietly to Sam beside the school entrance. Just last night, Rachel knows, they were on a date, happily together while Sam met her parents. This morning, with Sam's face structured, determined, aloof, the two of them standing close, but apart, Quinn speaking concerns in hushed tones, it is a reminder. It is a reminder that they are together, and Sam has more than his father's death to live with in his life. It is a reminder of a bond that seemed so trivial, seemed entirely eclipsed by disaster in the last twenty-four hours that it became forgotten.

Rachel is about to follow Puck's example and go to her car when the two blondes stop speaking, and Sam goes off past her. She is about to move off and get this show on the road. But then Quinn is grabbing at her hand and pulling her back around, and Rachel is blinking at the intrusion and the delay.

"You," Quinn hissed, and it sounds angry – like she's furious with Rachel for silently dissuading her from joining their convoy, their mission, like she's mad at being asked to stay out of the immediate danger. Rachel thinks she is about to be scathed. But then Quinn's gaze softens, as does her grip, and Rachel is inevitably pulled back into the girl's orbit as soft fingers toy with her own. "Don't – don't die, okay?"

It's quiet, and vulnerable, and their joined hands are hidden from anyone who might look their way. Rachel doesn't know how to respond to the request, or further, how to respond to the concern, and so she squeezes the cheerleader's hand and tries to give what she hopes is a reassuring smile. And then she lets go and pulls away, takes to her car. Turns her key in the ignition and drives down deserted roads with the two cars following.

Hopes she isn't leading the four of them to their deaths. Prays she isn't making another mistake.

* * *

_And is it worth the wait -  
__all this killing time?  
__Are you strong enough to stand  
__protecting both your heart and mine?_

_Who is the betrayer?  
Who's the killer in the crowd?  
The one who creeps in corridors  
and doesn't make a sound_

_**Heavy In Your Arms, Florence + The Machine**_

* * *

_So. Reviews and such._


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